I’ve got that Beethoven energy, that Stravinsky energy. And it’s all a gift from the Creator.
Nobody has Francis Bacon on their walls in their house – or very few people – but sometimes people listen to Beethoven as though it was background and a comfort, and I think that is very dangerous.
In my younger days, I used to visit record shops and covet boxed sets of Beethoven symphonies, Wagner operas, Bach cantatas, Mozart piano concertos. Only rarely was I able to find the money for such luxuries.
In music, they’re not endlessly rewriting Beethoven’s ‘Third Symphony;’ in visual art, they aren’t painting portraits of 16th-century royalty. Art moves forward.
I don’t get so much inspiration from other musicians. Especially alive musicians. Late musicians are good – Bach, Beethoven – yes, good.
We are a global society, and one does not have to be from Germany to give a great performance of Beethoven.
When I was five, I heard the end of Beethoven’s ‘Ninth Symphony’ with my mother, and I got goosebumps all over my body.
We built a bit of an audience at our university in Cambridge, playing Beethoven and Mozart quartets.
I really like the Doors. I like Kevin Spacey, Bruce Springsteen, Will Farrell, Reggie Watts, Tina Turner, who is also very hot, Tracy Chapman. Beethoven.
Between 1958 and 1963, I sold about 40 million records – to the shock of my mother and father because I was always playing Beethoven. But I bought my mother a mink stole. She was very happy, and she said, ‘I think this is better than Beethoven.’
You don’t go out and play Beethoven’s ‘Opus 111’ without having rethought about it every time you play.
When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.
What makes a Beethoven symphony spectacular, what makes a Brahms rhapsody spectacular is that the patterns are wondrous.
To me, a song is not finished. To me, there’s no such thing as a finished anything. All of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, to me, are one. I think of it as having no beginning and no end.
Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully.
I free-form it, rock n’ roll it. I’m a creature of risk, so I don’t know how I’m going to explore a Beethoven symphony until I’m doing it.
My grandmother got me recordings of the ‘Goldberg Variations,’ in addition to the ‘Brandenburg Concertos,’ the Mozart string quartets and Beethoven’s ‘Seventh Symphony.’
Guided By Voices was huge when I was 16. Then I got into the Beatles, then classical music, Beethoven.
It’s clear on the one hand that an education enriches and informs a response to beauty, even makes it possible in esoteric cases. On the other hand, there’s no question that someone with no musical education whatsoever might wander into a concert hall and be overwhelmed by the ‘Beethoven Pastoral Symphony’.
My parents once caught me conducting Beethoven’s ‘Fifth Symphony.’
If you go to Japan for instance, you should know that they have a different way of playing Beethoven or Brahms. But if you play with them Mozart, Debussy, Mendelssohn, they have a wonderful light feeling for that.
I like Beethoven, especially the poems.
Beethoven’s fourth and seventh symphonies have a certain amount in common. Well, of course they’re both written by Beethoven, but besides that, I would say their overall effect and idea is to provide the listener with an incredible sense of joy.
Napolean is dead – but Beethoven lives.
I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert’s and Beethoven’s chamber music and Sibelius’ symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner.
A lot of people don’t know that Beethoven, when he wrote the Fifth Symphony, that second movement, he took eight years to figure that out!
Beethoven suppressed everything, his personal life disappeared until he was locked inside. That is a figure quite extreme.
I’m very eclectic in my music tastes – anything from Nina Simone to Beethoven to Talvin Singh.
I’m trying to learn classical piano, Mozart and Beethoven and stuff. I took lessons when I was younger and now I sort of sight read the music and play it by ear. It’s fun. It takes up a lot of time. I practice a couple of hours a day, but I find it soothing.
I’m a big Beethoven fan, and you’ll struggle to find a three-minute song on any of his stuff.
Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.
If they say they don’t like the way I play Beethoven, then I can swallow that, and maybe they’re right. But if they don’t like what I’ve written, then it’s about me.
And it’s a crime because the great plays of history, going all the way back to the Greeks, are part of everybody’s heritage. It’s just like in music, Beethoven or Mozart, that’s everybody’s heritage.
I suppose I have become a sort of living monument in Portugal. But I come from a family with roots all over the world, so the idea of patriotism is not very strong in me. My country is the country of Chekhov, Beethoven, Velasquez – writers I like, painters and artists I admire.
Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.
My teachers said, ‘Always keep a Beethoven sonata under your fingers.’ I always have. I still play chamber music, and I always play classical.
I really don’t think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too.
I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.
While I’m working, I stick with music that won’t distract me – the dub stylings of Scientist and King Tubby, maybe some Beethoven string quartets.
Frank Zappa… was Beethoven for insane rock guys.
A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people.
I hate playing the piano! And it’s so hard to fight for Beethoven’s soul! But that’s what I have to do!
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