Top 51 Brahms Quotes & Sayings

I started out as a singer and a musician, and I was taught that your job is just to get out of the way of Brahms or Arthur Miller or Shakespeare and convey the brilliance that they created.

I don't believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.

The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary

Even if you're playing Brahms or a Beethoven concerto, you've got to have a different vantage point, slightly, each time.

I saw Brahms's Hungarian Rhapsody on television when I was two. Tom and Jerry were playing it together. I thought, 'Hey, if a cat can play like that, why can't I?'

I listen to music when I write. I need the musical background. Classical music. I'm behind the times. I'm still with Baroque music, Gregorian chant, the requiems, and with the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. That is what I need for the climate, for the surroundings, for the landscape: the music.

Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

Brahms once remarked that the mark of an artist is how much he throws away. Nature, the great creator, is always throwing things away. A frog lays several million eggs at a sitting. Only a few dozen of these become tadpoles, and only a few of those become frogs. We can let imagination and practice be as profligate as nature.

the writer must resist this temptation [to quote] and do his best with his own tools. It would be most convenient for us musicians if, arrived at a given emotional crisis in our work, we could simply stick in a few bars of Brahms or Schubert. Indeed many composers have no hesitation in so doing. But I have never heard the practice defended; possibly because that hideous symbol of petty larceny, the inverted comma, cannot well be worked into a musical score.

It is important for the musician to learn as much about the composer as possible and to study the music he has written. Then, even a short piece by Brahms or Chopin can be played with much more understanding.

We'll win, of course," he said. "You don't want that," said the demon. "Why not, pray?“ “Listen," said Crowley desperately, "how many musicians do you think your side have got, eh? First grade, I mean." Aziraphale looked taken aback. "Well, I should think-" he began. "Two," said Crowley. "Elgar and Liszt. That's all. We've got the rest. Beethoven, Brahms, all the Bachs, Mozart, the lot. Can you imagine eternity with Elgar?

Brahms believed that there was no need to publish absolutely everything that Schubert ever wrote.

I think Bach is equally a romantic composer because he laid the seeds harmonically for people like Chopin and the great Romantics, Brahms, so it's difficult to you know all this like labelling and putting - I think Bach is attractive to musicians because he supersedes the labels.

Fortunately, I started very young, so I read music very well. And my favorite composers to play are Brahms and Mozart.

Brahms stayed an extra day to hear my [Fifth] Symphony and was very kind ... I like his honesty and open-mindedness. Neither he nor the players liked the finale, which I also think rather horrible.

I play a lot chamber music.As for something that's hard for me to play, before I leave this Earth I'm hoping to play Brahms' Second Piano Concerto.

You don't see the European classical musicians allowing the music of Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven to become extinct. That music has gone on for centuries and centuries. We have the same obligation. Why do we have to become so 'hip' that we can say, 'Bebop is square,' or "New Orleans is square'? This, to me, is a shame.

I listen to either romantic classical music, Brahms or Beethoven or something like Mozart, or I go all the way contemporary and listen to Metallica or Adele, Radiohead, jazz, whatever it is that is completely opposite.

Deep down, classical Romantic music is what I love: Brahms, Tchaikovsky, the Romantics.

The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary. rather tiresomely addicted to dressing himself up as Handel or Beethoven and making a prolonged and intolerable noise.

What makes a Beethoven symphony spectacular, what makes a Brahms rhapsody spectacular is that the patterns are wondrous.

I grew up listening to my parents' albums. Many of them were either classical - Bach, Beethoven and Brahms - or easy listening, like Mantovani. I loved the spectrum of emotions in classical music, from fortissimo to pianissimo. My early passion for classical made my drumming more musical later on.

...stories about [the German composer Johannes] Brahms's rudeness and wit amused me in particular. For instance, I loved the one about how a great wine connoisseur invited the composer to dinner. 'This is the Brahms of my cellar,' he said to his guests, producing a dust-covered bottle and pouring some into the master's glass. Brahms looked first at the color of the wine, then sniffed its bouquet, finally took a sip, and put the glass down without saying a word. 'Don't you like it?' asked the host. 'Hmm,' Brahms muttered. 'Better bring your Beethoven!'

Sometimes I have the feeling that you are not quite aware--and this honors you--of the historical greatness of your position, that you think too modestly about yourself. Everything you do is destined to be of historic significance. One day, your letters, your decisions, will belong to all mankind, like those of Wagner and Brahms.

The only work that can be compared to Chopin's Etudes, innovatively, where every note is essential and one becomes completely exposed, is the Brahms-Paganini variations. These are etudes - not as interesting musically as, say, the Brahms-Handel - but they are incredible.

The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost.

Classical pianist Awadagin Pratt. I first heard this eccentric and introverted performer when I was living in the Midwest. He was playing Brahms ballades - haunting.

There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.

I think that I make chords when I paint, so I think you would be listening to the cello. It's deep, and it's resonant. A lot of people have compared me to Brahms - that slightly melancholic sensuality that's highly structured. Well, that describes my work right there.

If you think of the history, in the days of Brahms and Beethoven and all these guys, almost every concert was a new music concert. To play something old was really an exception.

I stick to playing Brahms, but I love listening to Led Zeppelin, and I've also been a big fan of Earth Wind and Fire since the Seventies and of The Gap Band since the Eighties.

I once sent him a song and asked him to mark a cross wherever he thought it was faulty. Brahms returned it untouched, saying 'I don't want to make a cemetery of your compositions.'

In truth, I became a conductor because deep down I wanted to conduct Brahms's four symphonies and Richard Strauss's tone poems.

Brahms is one of my all-time favorite composers.

I think Bach is equally a romantic composer because he laid the seeds harmonically for people like Chopin and the great Romantics, Brahms, so its difficult to you know all this like labelling and putting - I think Bach is attractive to musicians because he supersedes the labels.

A landscape, torn by mists and clouds, in which I can see ruins of old churches, as well as of Greek temples - that is Brahms.

The three greatest composers are Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. All the others are cretins.

I'm too busy playing. When I'm playing I don't pay attention to who's listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don't listen to one instrument; you listen to music.

When Brahms is in extra good spirits, he sings, "The grave is my joy".

Brahms is life-changing every time. And though I love him, I can't say that about Mompou.

Listening to my regular favourites - Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and so on - I always feel, quite misguidedly, that nothing can be too bad if such beauty and brilliance exists in the world.

After working with Ligeti I began to hear Brahms and Beethoven differently.

Every orchestra is different. Sometimes, you're blown away by a particular musician. If I'm playing the Brahms concerto, it's crucial to have a great oboe player, because we work in tandem.

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.

Reviewer: 'One of your themes was very similar to one of Beethoven's!' Brahms replied, 'Of course it is. Everyone steals - the important thing is to do it brilliantly.

I love Mozart, and I love Bach, and Brahms, and - but at 13, I didn't understand any of that that I was playing.

I can't stand being in Chicago anymore and hearing the Brahms Violin Concerto in the elevator. Because that shows me that when they come to the concert hall they listen to it in the same way.

That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.

The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven’s. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart’s jewel, is Mendelssohn’s.

In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of 'their' works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.

To my mind and ear, there is simply nothing that compares to the musical sophistication of a late Beethoven, Bartok, Schubert or Brahms work for minimal forces.