We should read music in the same way that an educated adult will read a book: in silence, but imagining the sound.

We should read music in the same way that an educated adult will read a book: in silence, but imagining the sound.

Our age of mechanization leads along a road ending with man himself as a machine. Only the spirit of singing can save us from this fate.

I would advise my young colleagues, the composers of symphonies, to drop in sometimes at the kindergarten, too. It is there that it is decided whether there will be anybody to understand their works in twenty years time.

Music is nourishment, and a comforting elixir. Music multiplies the beauty of life and all its values.

The characteristics of a good musician can be summarized as follows: 1. A well-trained ear. 2. A well-trained intelligence. 3. A well-trained heart. 4. A well-trained hand. All four must develop together, in constant equilibrium. As soon as one lags behind or rushes ahead, there is something wrong. So far most of you have met only the requirement of the fourth point: the training of your fingers has left the rest far behind. You would have achieved the same results more quickly and easily, however, if your training in the other three had kept pace.

Music is a manifestation of the human spirit, similar to language. Its greatest practitioners have conveyed to mankind things not possible to say in any other language. If we do not want these things to remain dead treasures, we must do our utmost to make the greatest possible number of people understand their idiom.