Top 19 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Strauss

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a German composer Richard Strauss.

Last updated on April 15, 2025.

Richard Georg Strauss was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.

German - Composer | June 11, 1864 - September 8, 1949

Source: Wikipedia

I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

Richard Strauss

Bear in mind that you are not making music for your own pleasure, but for the pleasure of your audience.

Richard Strauss

Never let the horns and woodwinds out of your sight; if you can hear them at all, they are too loud.

Richard Strauss

The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play.

Richard Strauss

Never look encouragingly at the brass, except with a short glance to give an important cue.

Richard Strauss

Must one become seventy years old to recognize that one's greatest strength lies in creating musical kitsch?

Richard Strauss

Its a funny thing Alice, dying is just the way I composed it in Tod und Verklärung.

Richard Strauss

On conducting: If you can just barely hear the French horns on stage, the balance is perfect.

Richard Strauss

I want to be able to depict in music a glass of beer so accurately that every listener can tell whether it is a Pilsner or a Kulmbacher.

Richard Strauss

Never look at the brass - it only encourages them.

Richard Strauss

The aria, after all, is the soul of opera.

Richard Strauss

I shall never be converted, and I shall remain true to my old religion of the classics until my life's end.

Richard Strauss

If you think that the brass is not blowing loud enough, mute it by a couple of degrees.

Richard Strauss

don't perspire while conducting - only the audience should get warm.

Richard Strauss

The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but the most difficult to play.

Richard Strauss

Never look at the trombones, you'll just encourage them.

Richard Strauss

Ideas, like young wine, should be put in storage and taken up again only after they have been allowed to ferment and to ripen.

Richard Strauss

The most perfect melodic shapes are found in Mozart; he has the lightness of touch which is the true objective ... Listen to the remarkable expansion of a Mozart melody, to Cherubino's 'Voi che sapete', for instance. You think it is coming to an end, but it goes farther, even farther.

Richard Strauss

He'd be better off shoveling snow.

Richard Strauss

Top 19 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Strauss

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