Top 10 Quotes & Sayings by Sergei Rachmaninoff

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Last updated on September 19, 2024.

Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom notable for its song-like melodicism, expressiveness and rich orchestral colours. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output and he made a point of using his skills as a performer to fully explore the expressive and technical possibilities of the instrument.

Russian - Composer | April 1, 1873 - March 28, 1943

Source: Wikipedia

The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

The most efficient way to memorise a piece is to use the one which proceeds in an error free manner

Sergei Rachmaninoff

I compose music because I must give expression to my feelings, just as I talk because I must give utterance to my thoughts.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

A good conductor ought to be a good chauffeur; the qualities that make the one also make the other. They are concentration, an incessant control of attention, and presence of mind; the conductor only has to add a little sense of music.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

What is Music? How do you define it? Music is a calm moonlit night, the rustle of leaves in Summer. Music is the far off peal of bells at dusk! Music comes straight from the heart and talks only to the heart: it is Love! Music is the Sister of Poetry and her Mother is sorrow!

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Opinion in all parts of the world would agree that Rachmaninoff is the most complete of living masters of the instrument; his technique is comprehensive, and he is, of course, musical to his bone's marrow. Most important of all, he is a composer, and for this reason he is able to approach a work as none of his pianist contemporaries can approach one - that is, from the inside, as an organic and felt creative process.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of musical trash.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

My dear hands. Farewell, my poor hands.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Top 10 Quotes & Sayings by Sergei Rachmaninoff

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