Perhaps only a Genius can truly understand Genius.

You should diligently play scales and fingerpractices. There are many, however, who believe they'll achieve all, by practicing daily on technique for hours on end, up till high age. It's like practicing every day to enumerate the alfabet faster and faster. One would think one could make better use of their valuable time.

Only when the form grows clear to you, will the spirit become so too.

My whole life has been a twenty years struggle between poetry and prose, or, if you like to call it so, Music and Law.

To compose is to remember music that has never been written.

Confidence and courage are special skills to the art ... Within the four walls of his study, the artist should be modest, work diligently and conscientiously. While for the public, he'll show himself audacious, yes even into cheerful boldness. And so a new public's darling has arisen.

Think it a vile habit to alter works of good composers, to omit parts of them, or to insert new-fashioned ornaments. This is the greatest insult you can offer to Art.