Beethoven Quotes

(on portraying famous people): It`s a double-edged sword because, in one sense, you have a lot of material to work with, but in a strange kind of way, that puts up a framework that you have to keep within. You can`t play Beethoven with pink hair but, to an extent, because no-one has ever met him, who`s going to tell me that`s not Beethoven?

With Beethoven (Immortal Beloved (1994)) I said I wanted a role where I didn`t have to do anything stupid with my hair. My agent said "Read it again!".

If Beethoven and Bach hooked up with Mozart and made a band, they COULD be a distant runner up to The D.

I had a line in one of my movies - `Everyone knows the same truth.` Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it. One person will distort it with a kind of wishful thinking like religion, someone else will distort it by thinking political solutions are going to do something, someone else will think a life of sensuality is going to do it, someone else will think art transcends. Art for me has always been the Catholicism of the intellectuals. There is no afterlife for the Catholics really, and there`s no afterlife for the arts. `Your painting lived on after you` - well, that doesn`t really do it. That`s not what you want. Even if your painting does have some longevity, eventually that`s going to go. There won`t be any works of William Shakespeare or Ludwig van Beethoven, or any theatre to see them in, or air or light. I`ve always felt you`ve got to live your life within the context of this worst-case scenario. Which is true; the worst-case scenario is here.

The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that (Adolf Hitler) was a German and (Ludwig van Beethoven) an Austrian.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

I remember when we did a concert after the 9/11 tragedy ? a performance of Beethoven`s Ninth Symphony ? everybody just rose up 10 notches above what they normally could do ? and it was a great performance.

Bringing the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, fabulous guest vocalists and this super-sized chorus together to perform Beethoven`s Ninth reflects the nature of this revolutionary piece -- it requires all 240 people on stage to do justice to the power and magnificence of Beethoven`s final symphony.

And it`s a crime because the great plays of history, going all the way back to the Greeks, are part of everybody`s heritage. It`s just like in music, Beethoven or Mozart, that`s everybody`s heritage.

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

As a small boy I had read about Beethoven in the Book of Knowledge, now I was listening enraptured to his sonatas and symphonies.

I play the piano and have been playing since I was 7, mainly classical Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart.

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.

Yesterday I was playing Beethoven`s fifth, because I love that.

There was one thing Beethoven didn`t do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn`t improvising.

Beethoven had a great look. It was very much about the drama of appearance.

I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.

the honest answer has to be that it`s great music, but also the fact that it spans the whole range of Beethoven`s language. It`s the ultimate challenge, one of the ultimate rewards in music, as much for the listener as for the performer.

I was both thrilled and overjoyed when I heard about the re-discovery of this wonderful manuscript, a true original by an artist for the ages. This wonderful find brings back the excitement of fifteen years ago, when the Seminary celebrated the unearthing of an original score by another musical genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At that time, we called it the `Mozart miracle`. It seems appropriate that this time we are thankful for the `Beethoven blessing.` Through the extraordinary generosity of the Doane family, God has once again blessed us with a gift that is of rare and practical beauty.

I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.

Life can`t be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.

Even Beethoven didn`t get that.

It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.

Just the thought of a rap version of Beethoven`s Fifth Symphony or `Achy, Breaky Heart` is bound to make people smile.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.