Two years of close association with some of the best (as well as some of the worst) tunes in the world was a better musical education than any amount of sonatas and fugues.

A supreme composer can only come out of a musical nation.

I suppose it never occurs to these people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.

The great men of music close periods; they do not inaugurate them. The pioneer work, the finding of new paths, is left to smaller men.

I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on the dog.

There is no reason why an atheist could not write a good Mass.

Have we not all about us forms of a musical expression which we can take and purify and raise to the level of great art?.