J Brahms Quotes

#1. 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.

Elie Wiesel

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

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

#3. How lucky is the man who, like Mozart and others, goes to the tavern of an evening and writes some fresh music. For he lives while he is creating.

Johannes Brahms

#4. 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.

Carlo Grante

#5. To follow in Beethoven's footsteps transcends one's strength.

Johannes Brahms

#6. 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.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

#7. In my study I can lay my hand on the Bible in the pitch dark. All truly inspired ideas come from God. The powers from which all truly great composers like Mozart, Schubert, Bach and Beethoven drew their inspirations is the same power that enabled Jesus to do his miracles.

Johannes Brahms

#8. If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.

Johannes Brahms

#9. Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration.

Johannes Brahms

#10. 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.

Condoleezza Rice

#11. What would become of all historical biography if it was written only with consideration for other peoples' feelings?

Johannes Brahms

#12. 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.

Elliott Carter

#13. A symphony is no joke.

Johannes Brahms

#14. The fact that most people do not understand and respect the very best things, such as Mozart's concertos, is what permits men like us to become famous.

Johannes Brahms

#15. Study Bach. There you will find everything.

Johannes Brahms

#16. 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.

Kurt Masur

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

Franz Liszt

#18. If we cannot write with the beauty of Mozart, let us at least try to write with his purity.

Johannes Brahms

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

Esa-Pekka Salonen

#20. 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.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

#21. Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully.

Johannes Brahms

#22. I sometimes ponder on variation form and it seems to me it ought to be more restrained, purer.

Johannes Brahms

#23. How can you have faith in human nature when you think that a sewer and certain moments of Schumann or Brahms are connected by secret, shadowy, subterranean passageways.

Ernesto Sabato

#24. 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.

George Bernard Shaw

#25. Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them.

Johannes Brahms

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

Hans Von Bulow

#27. 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.

Oscar Peterson

#28. The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary

George Bernard Shaw

#29. Nothing is so lovely as a quietly snoring dog and some evening Brahms, as you sit in a comfortably overstuffed chair with your feet on the footstool.

Ann Beattie

#30. I think one of the reasons it ended was that his eyes never lit up for me the way they did for classical music. I realize that in the long run I may not be as wonderful as a Brahms symphony but I think I'm good for a Haydn quintet.

Daniel Handler