Quotes & Sayings About Mahler

I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young ... he killed himself in the prime of his life. — Gustav Mahler

Although, I am proud of all my Symphonies as they all have something special to say, my particular favourite is the Fifth. As the great Mahler expert Donald Mitchell said that if Mahler had written another Symphony, it would have been my Fifth! — Malcolm Arnold

I don't like to hurry. I'm not a conductor of the fast, fiery romantic type. I prefer Bruckner, with the sincerity of his musical language and the huge time spans in which his ideas develop, to Mahler, with his hysteria and self-indulgence. — Jeffrey Tate

I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding. — Gustav Mahler

It is a funny thing, but when I am making music, all the answers I seek for in life seem to be there, in the music. Or rather, I should say, when I am making music, there are no questions and no need for answers. — Gustav Mahler

I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas - I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day. — Gustav Mahler

For the last month I have been a strict vegetarian. The moral effects of this regime are immense, owing to the voluntary subjugation of the flesh and the resulting absence of desires. You will appreciate how full I am of this idea when I tell you that I expect it to work the regeneration of mankind. I advise you to change over to a natural way of life, with proper nourishment (wholemeal bread), and you will soon feel the benefit. — Gustav Mahler

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion. — Gustav Mahler

At the age of six, Mahler accepted paid commissions as a composer, something he was never to do in later life, his mother having promised him two kreuzers on condition that he did not make any ink blots on the expensive music manuscript paper. — Jens Malte Fischer

I live like a Hottentot. I cannot exchange one sensible word with anyone. — Gustav Mahler

It should be one's sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew. — Gustav Mahler

In the theatrical works we love and admire the most, the ending of the drama generally takes place offstage. — Gustav Mahler

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything. — Gustav Mahler

I found a deep kinship between Mahler's recurrent attempts to confront all sides of life and to affirm himself in the face of his own finitude, and Aschenbach's dedication to persevere in the literary evocation of beauty. Exploring this kinship led me to reflect on many of Mahler's songs and symphonies - and particularly his great masterpiece, Das Lied von der Erde. The end result was a way of reading Mann that I hadn't originally anticipated at all. — Philip Kitcher

I like to sing to Verdi, I like singing to Sibelius, and Mahler maybe. — Rufus Wainwright

Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing through.
His voice is deep,
then he lifts it until it seems
to fall from the sky.
I am thrilled.
I am grateful.
Then, by the end of morning,
he's gone, nothing but silence
out of the tree
where he rested for a night.
And this I find acceptable.
Not enough is a poor life.
But too much is, well, too much.
Imagine Verdi or Mahler
every day, all day.
It would exhaust anyone. — Mary Oliver

I'm on the cross. be kind and they put you on the cross. that son of a bitch on his couch talking about Mahler and Kant and cunt and revolution, not really knowing about any of them. — Charles Bukowski

My favorite composers are the ones that tell the story. I love Wagner. I love Mahler. Prokofiev. The programmatic music. I listen more to classic rock because I don't like the contemporary music very much. — Patti LuPone

The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause. — Gustav Mahler

I like the way Mahler wandered about in his music and still retained his passion. He must have looked like an earthquake walking down the street. — Charles Bukowski

Garris had pet names for all of them. Mahler was the Mad Doktor. Franz Liszt was Son of Lovecraft. Mendelssohn was Santa Claus Meets the Hell's Angels. Beethoven was the High School Principal. — Chet Williamson

In a supersonic jet, you'll land before you take off. Your watch - if it's working right - will go back. (It'll stop if it's not). You've made a journey forwards and backwards at the same time. The trip will make you younger. — Zdenek Mahler

Only when I experience do I compose - only when I compose do I experience. — Gustav Mahler

Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking. — Gustav Mahler

Mahler was a poor yea-sayer. His voice cracks, like Nietzsche's, when he proclaims values, speaks from mere conviction, when he himself puts into practice the abhorrent notion of overcoming on which the thematic analyses capitalise, and makes music as if joy were already in the world. His vainly jubilant movements unmask jubilation; his subjective incapacity for the happy end denounces itself. — Theodor W. Adorno

I cannot work and listen to Wagner at the same time, nor Mahler, nor Beethoven's late quartets. I enjoy listening to Chopin's piano music when I work. — I.M. Pei

Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one's way. — Gustav Mahler

If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies. — Gustav Mahler

I beg of you ... never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise. — Gustav Mahler

It is always the same with me; only when I experience something do I compose, and only when composing do I experience! After all, a musician's nature can hardly be expressed in words. — Gustav Mahler

With the coming of spring, I am calm again. — Gustav Mahler

I cannot listen to Beethoven or Mahler or Chopin or Bach when I write because those composers require you stop what you are doing and listen. — Antonio Damasio

What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized. — Gustav Mahler

He wanted us to play whatever we played in the most characteristic and appropriate style. Even it was the theme from 'The Godfather,' you needed to play that then the way that a Hollywood producer would expect it to be played. Whether it was that or the posthorn solo from Mahler's Symphony No. 3, he would expect that to be played in the way that Leonard Bernstein wanted to hear it. In retrospect, I think it was a sensational way to teach this particular group of students. By the time you graduated you could absolutely read anything with any trumpet. — Manny Laureano

Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift. — Gustav Mahler

Presenting Aschenbach as a composer - based on Mahler - leads to some dreadful scenes (especially those in which Aschenbach is berated by his student), and it surely distorts the character Mann created. Yet, we know that Mann's novella was based on a holiday in Venice he took with his wife and brother, and that while he was there he followed the reports in the German newspapers, describing the dying Mahler's progress as he returned from New York to Vienna. — Philip Kitcher

I don't choose what I compose. It chooses me. — Gustav Mahler

Perhaps, once I am gone, the one thing I might be remembered for is having sung a great deal of Mahler with a great many phenomenal conductors. It is wonderful music, very spiritual. — Maureen Forrester

That which draws us by its mystical force; what every created thing, even the very stones, feels with absolute certainty as the center of its being ... is the force of love. Christians call this "eternal blessedness." It is a necessity of man for growth and joy. — Gustav Mahler

My tastes went all over the place, from Strauss to Mahler. I was never a big Wagner or Tchaikovsky fan. Benjamin Britten, Tallis, all the early English Medieval music, Prokofiev, some Russian composers, mostly the people that were the colorists, the French. — James Horner

Ireland in shades of black and green under the gibbous moon. Ireland under the canopy of grey cloud, under the crow's wing and the helicopter blade. A night ride over the Lagan valley and the bandit country of South Armagh. The music in my head was Mahler's Ninth Symphony, which opens with a hesitant syncopated motif evocative of Mahler's irregular heartbeat. — Adrian McKinty

In breaking down the developmental journey through successive states of psychic organization, Mahler enabled clinicians to understand more deeply and treat more effectively children and adults who came to be officially diagnosed as borderline patients, whose severe pathology fell between the classifications of neurosis and psychosis. — Stephen A. Mitchell

The spirit can assert itself only through the medium of clear form. — Gustav Mahler

I have always adored Mahler, and Mahler was a major influence on the music of the Beatles. John and me used to sit and do the Kindertotenlieder and Wunderhorn for hours, we'd take turns singing and playing the piano. We thought Mahler was gear. — Paul McCartney

Sadness is a cloak that covers our heart, but it can never extinguish love. — Barbara A. Mahler

The real art of conducting consists in transitions. — Gustav Mahler

I have enjoyed most particularly reading the correspondence between Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. The genuine friendship, competitiveness and support that thread through their communications are life lessons for us all. — Jessye Norman

Studying Mahler changed many things in my tastes as a composer. Mahler & Berg are my favourite composers even today, as opposed to Hindemith, say, a Krenek and Milhaud whom I liked when I was young but cooled towards rapidly. — Dmitri Shostakovich

I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way. — Gustav Mahler

Life's been nothing but paperwork. — Gustav Mahler

Einstein Freud Marx Proust Mahler Mendelssohn Chagall & don't forget Dr. Jonas Salk ... & still they hate us! — Sonia Taitz

Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again. — Gustav Mahler

Mahler wrote it as the third movement of his Fourth Symphony. I mean the fourth movement of his First Symphony. We play it third. The trumpet solo will be played by our solo trumpet player. It's named 'Blumine,' which has something to do with flowers. — Eugene Ormandy

A true personality ... is like a robust organism that, with unconscious sureness, seeks out and digests the nourishment appropriate to it and vigorously rejects that which is unsuitable. — Gustav Mahler

To be passionate in today's world is not politically correct ... Nowadays we are supposed to cope. This was not Mahler's problem. He saw it, he heard it, and he expressed it. He was a kaleidoscopic, Olympian figure. — Lorin Maazel

I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed. — Gustav Mahler

An operetta is simply a small and gay opera. — Gustav Mahler

The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes. — Gustav Mahler

In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience. — Gustav Mahler

We all return. It is this certainty that gives meaning to life and it does not make the slightest difference whether or not in a later incarnation we remember the former life. What counts is not the individual and his comfort, but the great aspiration to the perfect and the pure which goes on in each incarnation. — Gustav Mahler

New York City revived around the team. I don't think you can look at the recovery of New York from the 1970s without, on some level, talking about Steinbrenner. Even if you're just talking about the feel of the city, he was part of a creation of a new sense of optimism. — Jonathan Mahler

When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one. — Gustav Mahler

Tradition is laziness. — Gustav Mahler

Anything of a serious nature isn't "instant" - you can't "do" the Sistine Chapel in one hour. And who has time to listen to a Mahler symphony, for God's sake? — Jonathan Cott

God can only be comprehended as Love. — Gustav Mahler

I have become a different person. I don't know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier. — Gustav Mahler

I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment. — Gustav Mahler

Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle. — Gustav Mahler

We know that he gave Aschenbach Mahler's first name, and also his facial features. So Visconti picks up on something interesting. That led me to think about ways of developing further the Aschenbach-Mahler connection. — Philip Kitcher

It's strange. When I put something incomprehensible into a picture, it's usually because the form and colour interest me and because it just happens to fit in. Thwn my friends come along : 'What is that suppose to mean _' And they rack their brains for an interpretation, finding so many ingenious explanations that I feel quite proud of all the unarticulated ideas concealed in my pictures." - Fernand Khnopff to Alma Mahler, while walking in the Prater in Vienna, from her diary July 1899 — Fernand Khnopff

I didn't know that Mahler would come to play so large a role, nor that music and literature and philosophy can interinanimate one another in the way I've come to think they do in this case. — Philip Kitcher

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. — Gustav Mahler

All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish. — Gustav Mahler

Man lives in greatest pain — Gustav Mahler

The call of love sounds very hollow among these immobile rocks. — Gustav Mahler

Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand. — Gustav Mahler

It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it. — Gustav Mahler

You should never trust anyone who listens to Mahler before they're forty. — Clive James

Outside Soviet Russia, and following the last symphonies of Mahler, Nielsen and Sibelius, an element of obsolescence has unmistakably attached itself to the genre. One could, perhaps, be forgiven for regarding Stravinsky's two ironic stylizations of the symphony as a fitting farewell salute. And yet the Shostakovich symphonies have, in Philip Larkin's phrase, 'penetrated the public mind' to an extent that has put them on a level with Beethoven. — Pauline Fairclough

My time will come, that is: after the finish of the recurring song cycles — Gustav Mahler

It is time to remind Sharon that the star of David belongs to all Jews, not to his repulsive Government. His actions are staining the star of David with blood. The Jewish people, whose gifts to civilised discourse include Einstein and Epstein, Mendelssohn and Mahler, Sergei Eisenstein and Billy Wilder, are now symbolised throughout the world by the blustering bully Ariel Sharon, a war criminal implicated in the murder of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila camps and now involved in killing Palestinians once again. — Gerald Kaufman

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes. — Gustav Mahler

Don't bother to look, I've composed all this already. — Gustav Mahler

If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster. — Gustav Mahler

It's ahead of us. All I can tell you is, not even courage will help." "Are you reading Alma Mahler again?" "No." Her voice was even and knowing. The underground river. The ceiling lowers, grows wet, the water rushes into darkness. The air becomes damp and icy, the passage narrows. Light is lost here, sound; the current begins to flow beneath great, impassable slabs. — James Salter

The important thing is never to let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries; to continue steadfastly on one's way without
letting oneself be either defeated by failure or diverted by applause. — Gustav Mahler

Tradition is tending the flame, not worshiping the ashes. — Gustav Mahler

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. — Gustav Mahler

Britten's opera tends to see things in simpler terms. It portrays an Aschenbach who wants a richer form of sexual fulfillment, and who is hemmed in by the social conventions to which he subscribes. But Visconti's use of the Mahler Adagietto is perfect for what I take to be Aschenbach's sexual desire. — Philip Kitcher

It is strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going. — Gustav Mahler

Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos. — Gustav Mahler

Don't bother looking at the view - I have already composed it. — Gustav Mahler

Destiny smiles upon me but without making me the least bit happier. — Gustav Mahler

Tradition is the spreading of fire and not the veneration of ashes. — Gustav Mahler

I am thrice homeless, as a bohemian, as an Austrian, and all over the world, you guessed it right I am Jewish — Gustav Mahler

To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole. — Gustav Mahler

A full cup of wine at the right time is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth! — Gustav Mahler

I love to read different books on completely different subjects at the same time. I cannot focus on one. I read a few pages of literature, then I jump to philosophy and at the same time I'm reading biographies of Mahler. — Gustavo Dudamel

It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces. — Gustav Mahler

The longer you live and the more you learn, the more clearly you will feel the difference between the few men who are truly great and the mere virtuosi. — Gustav Mahler