The most efficient way to memorise a piece is to use the one which proceeds in an error free manner

I compose music because I must give expression to my feelings, just as I talk because I must give utterance to my thoughts.

A good conductor ought to be a good chauffeur; the qualities that make the one also make the other. They are concentration, an incessant control of attention, and presence of mind; the conductor only has to add a little sense of music.

I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me.

My dear hands. Farewell, my poor hands.

The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.

The most efficient way to memorise a piece is to use the one which proceeds in an error free manner