Quotes & Sayings About Berlioz

It is difficult to put into words what I suffered-the longing that seemed to be tearing my heart out by the roots, the dreadful sense of being alone in an empty universe, the agonies that thrilled through me as if the blood were running ice-cold through my veins, the disgust with living, the impossibility of dying. Shakespeare himself never described this torture; but he counts it, in Hamlet, among the terrible of all the evils of existence. I had stopped composing; my mind seemed to become feebler as my feelings grew more intense. I did nothing. One power was left to me-to suffer. — Hector Berlioz

He was dying all his life. — Hector Berlioz

If you want to find the source of much of the music of modern day Russia, you will find it in the incredible compositions of that crazed lunatic Berlioz. — Ray Bradbury

Have just been run over by tram-car at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three pm come. Berlioz. — Mikhail Bulgakov

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down. — Hector Berlioz

Passionate subjects must be dealt with in cold blood. — Hector Berlioz

To render my works properly requires a combination of extreme precision and irresistible verve, a regulated vehemence, a dreamy tenderness, and an almost morbid melancholy. — Hector Berlioz

Love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love. — Hector Berlioz

If men of genius only knew what love their works inspire! — Hector Berlioz

Imagine anybody having lived forty-five or fifty years without knowing Hamlet! One might as well spend one's life in a coal mine. — Hector Berlioz

Life when one first arrives is a continual mortification as one's romantic illusions are successively shattered and the musical treasure-house of one's imagination crumbles before the hopelessness of the reality. Every day fresh experiences bring fresh disappointments. — Hector Berlioz

Letter from Van Gogh to Gauguin: Ah! my dear friend, to make of painting what the music of Berlioz and Wagner has been before us ... a consolatory art for distressed hearts! There are as yet only a few who feel it as you and I do!!! [Letter 739, Arles, 21 January 1889] — Liesbeth Heenk

At least I have the modesty to admit that lack of modesty is one of my failings. — Hector Berlioz

A life without once reading Hamlet is like a life spent in a coal mine. — Hector Berlioz

Heine commenting on the music of Louis Hector Berlioz: He is an immense nightingale, a lark as great as an eagle ... The music causes me to dream of fabulous empires, filled with fabulous sins. — Hector Berlioz

The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck. — Hector Berlioz

It is so rare ... to find a complete person, with a soul, a heart and an imagination; so rare for characters as ardent and restless as ours to meet and to be matched together, that I hardly know how to tell you what happiness it gives me to know you. — Hector Berlioz

In my opinion, the trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments, which I have named the 'epic' one. It possesses nobility and grandeur to the highest degree; it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst. Directed by the will of the master, the trombones can chant like a choir of priests, threaten, utter gloomy sighs, a mournful lament, or a bright hymn of glory; they can break forth into awe-inspiring cries and awaken the dead or doom the living with their fearful voices. — Hector Berlioz

Music and love are the wings of the soul. — Hector Berlioz

The trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments ... it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst. — Hector Berlioz

Bach is Bach just as God is God. — Hector Berlioz

A feeble mind, conscious of its own feebleness, grows feeble under that very consciousness. As soon as the power of fear becomes known to it, there follows the fear of fear, and, on the first perturbation, reason abandons it. — Hector Berlioz

It must be added that from his first words the foreigner made a repellent impression on the poet, but Berlioz rather liked him - that is, not liked but ... how to put it ... was interested, or whatever. — Mikhail Bulgakov

Which of the two powers, Love or Music, can elevate man to the sublimest heights? ... It is a problem, and yet it seems to me that this is the answer: 'Love can give no idea of music; music can give an idea of love.' ... Why separate them? They are two wings of the soul. — Hector Berlioz

Time, time - that is our greatest master! Alas, like Ugolino, time devours its own children. — Hector Berlioz

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz — William L.K.

Ah! My dear friend painting is to us what the music of Berlioz and Wagner was before us - a consolatory art for sore hearts! And yet there are only a few like you and me who feel it!!! — Vincent Van Gogh

The Prince stood beside the timpanist to count his rests for him and see that he came in in the right place. I suppressed all the trumpet passages which were clearly beyond the players' grasp. The solitary trombone was left to his own devices; but as he wisely confined himself to the notes with which he was thoroughly familiar, such as A flat, D and F, and was careful to avoid all others, his success in the role was almost entirely a silent one. — Hector Berlioz

In poetry there are two giants, rough Homer and fine Shakespere. In music likewise we have two giants, Beethoven, the thinker, and the superthinker Berlioz. — Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky

One evening we were exploring the Baths of Caracalla together, while debating the question of merit or demerit in human behaviour and its rewards in life. As I was propounding some outrageous thesis or another in answer to the strictly orthodox and pious views put forward by him, his foot slipped and the next moment he was lying in a bruised condition at the bottom of a steep ruined staircase.
'Look at that for divine justice,' I said, helping him onto his feet. 'I blaspheme, you fall.'
This irreverence, accompanied by roars of laughter, apparently went to far, and thenceforth all religious arguments were banned. — Hector Berlioz

Only by pairing knowledge with inspiration will art evolve. Without these conditions any musician will remain a flawed artist, if one may speak of an artist at all. — Hector Berlioz

Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently. — James Gibbons

Fresh proof of the risks you run in writing about players, and of the advisability of not standing to leeward of their self-esteem when one has had the misfortune to wound it in the slightest degree. When you criticize a singer, you do not have his colleagues up in arms against you. Indeed, they generally feel that you have not been severe enough. But the virtuoso instrumentalist who belongs to a well-known musical organization always claims that in criticizing him you are 'insulting' the whole institution, and though the contention is absurd he sometimes succeeds in making the other players believe it. — Hector Berlioz

It is not enough that the artist should be well prepared for the public. The public must be well prepared for what it is going to hear. — Hector Berlioz

The brick is neither here nor there,' interrupted the stranger in an imposing fashion, 'it never merely falls on someone's head from out of nowhere. In your case, I can assure you that a brick poses no threat whatsoever. You will die another kind of death.
'And you know just what that will be?' queried Berlioz with perfectly understandable irony, letting himself be drawn into a truly absurd conversation. 'And can you tell me what that is?'
'Gladly,' replied the stranger. He took Berlioz's measure as if intending to make him a suit and muttered something through his teeth that sounded like 'One, two.. Mercury in the Second House ... the moon has set ... six-misfortune ... evening-seven ... ' Then he announced loudly and joyously, 'Your head will be cut off! — Mikhail Bulgakov

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