Thomas Beecham Sayings

#1. Thomas Beecham was a pompous little band-master who stood against everything creative in the art of his time.

John Fowles

#2. Try everything once. Except incest and folk dancing.' Sir Thomas Beecham

Richard Branson

#3. They are quite hopeless - drooling, driveling, doleful, depressing, dropsical drips.

Thomas Beecham

#4. Too much counterpoint; what is worse, Protestant counterpoint.

Thomas Beecham

#5. The bagpipes sound exactly the same when you have finished as when you started

Thomas Beecham

#6. What can you do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about.

Thomas Beecham

#7. Beethoven's last quartets were written by a deaf man and should only be listened to by a deaf man.

Thomas Beecham

#8. There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.

Thomas Beecham

#9. Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.

Thomas Beecham

#10. We cannot expect you to be with us all the time, but perhaps you could be good enough to keep in touch now and again.

Thomas Beecham

#11. If she is attractive, I can't perform with her; if she is not, then I won't.

Thomas Beecham

#12. No woman is worth the loss of a night's sleep.

Thomas Beecham

#13. Elgar's first symphony is the musical equivalent of St Pancras Railway Station.

Thomas Beecham

#14. Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.

Thomas Beecham

#15. A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.

Thomas Beecham

#16. No operatic star has yet died soon enough for me.

Thomas Beecham

#17. The British like any kind of music so long as it is loud.

Thomas Beecham

#18. "Have you heard any Stockhausen?" Beecham was asked. "No, but I believe I have stepped in some."

Thomas Beecham

#19. Try everything once, except folk dancing and incest.

Thomas Beecham

#20. The sound of the harpsichord resembles that of a bird-cage played with toasting-forks.

Thomas Beecham

#21. Music first and last should sound well, should allure and enchant the ear. Never mind the inner significance.

Thomas Beecham

#22. If I were a dictator I should make it compulsory for every member of the population between the ages of four and eighty to listen to Mozart for at least a quarter of an hour daily for the coming five years.

Thomas Beecham

#23. At a rehearsal I let the orchestra play as they like. At the concert I make them play as I like.

Thomas Beecham

#24. If an opera cannot be played by an organ grinder, it's not going to achieve immortality.

Thomas Beecham

#25. I have just been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it.

Thomas Beecham

#26. The trouble with women in an orchestra is that if they're attractive it will upset my players and if they're not it will upset me.

Thomas Beecham

#27. All the arts in America are a gigantic racket run by unscrupulous men for unhealthy women.

Thomas Beecham

#28. There are no woman composers, never have been and possibly never will be.

Thomas Beecham

#29. In the first movement alone, I took note of six pregnancies and at least four miscarriages.

Thomas Beecham

#30. Without question the most unpopular medium of musical sound in the world.

Thomas Beecham

#31. The musical equivalent of St Pancras Station.
(on Elgar)

Thomas Beecham

#32. Her singing reminds me of a cart coming downhill with the brake on.

Thomas Beecham

#33. Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away.

Thomas Beecham

#34. Composers and musicians have always starved and, as this is a sentimental country, we think the tradition should be continued.

Thomas Beecham

#35. I prefer Offenbach to Bach often.

Thomas Beecham

#36. Movie music is noise ... even more painful than my sciatica.

Thomas Beecham

#37. When asked whether he minded if someone smoked in a non-smoking compartment. Certainly not if you don't object if I'm sick.

Thomas Beecham

#38. Most people really don't like music - they just like the way it sounds.

Thomas Beecham

#39. A soprano in Massenet's Don Quixote complained that she had missed her entry in the aria, "because Mr. Challiapin always dies too soon." "Madam, you must be profoundly in error," said Sir Thomas, "No operatic star has yet died half soon enough for me."

Thomas Beecham

#40. The grand tune is the only thing in music that the great public really understands.

Thomas Beecham

#41. I find brass bands have a melancholy sound. All right out of doors, of course - fifty miles away. Like bagpipes, they turn what had been a dream into a public nuisance.

Thomas Beecham

#42. Movie music is noise. It's even more painful than my sciatica.

Thomas Beecham

#43. The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.

Thomas Beecham

#44. As you'll never hear the thing again, my boy, why not throw in a couple of brass bands?

Thomas Beecham