9 quotes
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
The author of The Prophet not only has the good luck to have talent, he has also the talent to have good luck.
Les soirées de l'orchestre (1852)
Instrumentation is to music precisely what color is to painting.
A travers chants (1862)
You request me to tell you…if it is true that the creed of all who profess to love high and serious art is: "There is no God but Bach, and Mendelssohn is his prophet"?
Mémoires (1870)
This sudden and unexpected revelation of Shakespeare overwhelmed me. The lightning-flash of his genius revealed the whole heaven of art to me, illuminating its remotest depths in a single flash. I recognised the meaning of real grandeur, real beauty, and the real dramatic truth.
Mémoires (1870)
I feel grateful to the happy chance which forced me to compose freely and in silence, and has thus delivered me from the tyranny of the fingers, so dangerous to thought.
Mémoires (1870)
That is, in fact, the true female voice of the orchestra – a voice at once passionate and chaste, heart-rending, yet soft, which can weep, sigh, and lament, chant, pray, and muse, or burst forth into joyous accents, as none other can do.
Grand Traité d'Instrumentation et d'Orchestration Modernes (1844)
I do not mean to say that it is necessary to imitate the mathematical regularity of the metronome, which would give the music thus executed an icy frigidity; I even doubt whether it would be possible to maintain this rigid uniformity for more than a few bars.
A Treatise Upon Modern Instrumentation and Orchestration (1858)
Poor devils! Where do these unfortunate creatures come from? On what butcher's block will they meet their end? What reward does municipal munificence allot them for thus cleaning (or dirtying) the pavements of Paris? At what age are they sent to the glue factory? What becomes of their bones (their skin is good for nothing)?