To the unmusical hearer a note on the gong means dinner, this perhaps often is menacing enough.

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.

But in the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.

Music is the reaching out towards the utmost realities by means of ordered sound.

Beethoven was ahead of the times, Bach behind them.

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