Quotations !

[Tevot]

Tradition ist Schlamperei

A quote from Mahler..."tradition is slovenly..."

Says it all imho ...and it is great listening on R3 listen again to the excerpt of Sandy Gibson with the BBC Scottish Symphony introducing Stockhausen's Gruppen to an unsuspecting audience back in the early 60s

Interesting to hear the audience response...gasps...but much applause...and what great playing.

Kind Regards,

Tevot

[Bert Coules]

A quote from Mahler..."tradition is slovenly..."

Didn't Toscanini once say something to the effect that "tradition is some idiot's half-remembered recollection of what was almost certainly a bad performance"?

Thanks for all the suggestions about that Wagner quote. I haven't found it yet, but in the meantime here's another:

Wagner [ie Wagner's music] is impossible... he talks without ever stopping.

That's from Robert Schumann.

[Flosshilde]

to put it into a Bed, that is constantly used, between rug and the blanket; but never to be expected, that no person be so inconsiderate as to tumble down upon the bed

I used to do this when I made bread, to encourage it to rise. Sorry, not a quote, but I'm sure there's something in a Jane Grigson book recommending the practice

[mangerton]

I have a breadmaker, which is very efficient, but that method sounds rather more fun.

[Richard Tarleton]

Thanks for the link Sigolene

[Karafan]

Interviewer to Sir Thomas Beecham, Bart: "Do you ever conduct Stockhausen, Sir Thomas?"
Sir Thomas: "No, but I think I trod in some once".

Karafan

[salymap]

Too simple for most of you but what about a mini-quiz on beloved BBC descriptions of music. Like

An Old Rogue's tale in rondo form.............?

The apotheosis of the dance ...............?

Err. Over to you.

[Ferretfancy]

Debussy with a companion at a concert featuring a very academic symphony " Let's leave now, he's starting to develop "

Barbirolli auditioned a new cellist, asking him to play a very elevated passage. " What? Oop there! I've never been oop there! "

[salymap]

One of Hornspieler's stories: Beecham's then wife gave a not very good performance of something [Betty Humby Beecham,pianist.] The platform attendent asked Tommy should they remove the piano at the interval or leave it 'til the end of the concert. He growled 'Leave it, it will crawl away on it's own'.

[Karafan]

Ha! Not heard the latter Beecham one, Salymap. Great stuff!

[Nick Armstrong]

I have just come across this splendid quote from a letter by Sibelius in 1943:

"I often conduct an orchestra in my sleep; my orchestras are so huge that the back desks of the violas vanish into the horizon. And everything is so wonderful."

[Tevot]

From Wikiquotes - Ralph Vaughan Williams

"In the next world, I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it."

Said to Sylvia Townsend Warner two weeks before his death; published in William Maxwell (ed.) The Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner (1982) p. 168.

[Bert Coules]

Those last two quotes are lovely. The Sibelius in particular puts me in mind of the great Wagner expert Ernest Newman who when asked to nominate the greatest Ring cycle he'd ever experienced said it had been by his cosy fireside with the scores in his hands.

[Serial_Apologist]

From Wikiquotes - Ralph Vaughan Williams

"In the next world, I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it."

Said to Sylvia Townsend Warner two weeks before his death; published in William Maxwell (ed.) The Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner (1982) p. 168.

I've always thought there was, if not a John Cage, at least a Buddhist of some kind in RVW.

[amateur51]

I have just come across this splendid quote from a letter by Sibelius in 1943:

"I often conduct an orchestra in my sleep; my orchestras are so huge that the back desks of the violas vanish into the horizon. And everything is so wonderful."

Old Jean been on the Jaegermeister again?!