Talk:Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Transwiki merge
I have just completed the merger of Transwiki:Tribute to Mozart into this article. It was list of about 70 quotes (!) from others about Mozart, which I have put into the "Quotes about Mozart" section (after sorting them by quotee and adding subheaders for anyone with 3 or more quotes). Here is the Transwiki page history:

This page was transwikied from en.wikipedia.org. List of contributors: 216.177.2.140 02:16, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * [2004-09-28T03:28:24Z] 200.187.219.11
 * [2004-09-28T03:32:08Z] Whosyourjudas ( move to wikiquote )

The Transwiki page will now be listed for deletion, per Transwiki policy on merging with existing articles. &mdash; Jeff Q (talk) 12:21, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Dispute
On the English Wikipedia there is a dispute about whether the quote by Albert Einstein is actually from Alfred Einstein (a major Mozart biographer). Do we have any actual paper sources attributing this to Albert? A paper, book, speech, anything? Thanks, Makemi 20:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. --Antiquary 18:38, 17 April 2009 (UTC)


 * My Praguers understand me. - after the premiere of Don Giovanni in Prague (not sourced)


 * Music is my life and my life is music. Anyone who does not understand this is not worthy of God.

Karl Barth

 * Mozart's music always sounds unburdened, effortless, and light. This is why it unburdens, releases, and liberates us.
 * Mozart's music is an invitation to the listener to venture just a little out of the sense of his own subjectivity.

Leonard Bernstein

 * It is hard to think of another composer who so perfectly marries form and passion.
 * Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation. Over it all hovers the greater spirit that is Mozart's &mdash; the spirit of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering &mdash; a spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all ages.
 * Mozart's music is constantly escaping from its frame, because it cannot be contained in it.

Charles Gounod

 * Before Mozart, all ambition turns to despair.
 * Mozart, prodigal heaven gave thee everything, grace and strength, abundance and moderation, perfect equilibrium.
 * Who has reached the extreme limits of scale with the same infallible precision, equally guarded against the false refinement of artificial elegance and the roughness of spurious force? Who has better known how to breathe anguish and dread into the purest and most exquisite forms?
 * Mozart exists, and will exist, eternally; divine Mozart - less a name, more a soul descending to us from the heavens, who appeared on this earth, stayed for a little over thirty years, and left it all the more rejuvenated, richer and happier for his appearance.
 * As with all great artists, Mozart expressed not only the soul, the taste and the aroma of his epoch, but also the spiritual world of man-man for all ages, in all the complexity of his desires, his struggles and ambivalence. Some of us, who only identify in Mozart a certain aristocratic refinement, may find these words strange. Often we meet with a condescending attitude towards him, to his music, reminiscent of chiming bells in a music box! ...'It's very nice, but not for me' say such people, 'give me passion - Beethoven, Brahms, tragic, monumental...' Such comments only reveal one thing, these people don't know Mozart.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

 * I find consolation and rest in Mozart's music, wherein he gives expression to that joy of life which was part of his sane and wholesome temperament.
 * Mozart is the highest, the culminating point that beauty has attained in the sphere of music.
 * Mozart is the musical Christ.

Others

 * We cannot despair about mankind knowing that Mozart was a man.
 * Albert Einstein
 * When Mozart composed he didn't have aims of genius, he simply was one.
 * Sir Roger Norrington
 * Mozart has the classic purity of light and the red ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.
 * Henri-Frédéric Amiel
 * Mozart shows a creative power of such magnitude that one can virtually say that he tossed out of himself one great masterpiece after another.
 * Claudio Arrau
 * Most of all I admire Mozart's capacity to be both deep and rational, a combination often said to be impossible.
 * Allan Bloom
 * Mozart combined high formality and playfulness that delights as no other composition in any other medium does.
 * Roy Blount, Jr.
 * In my dreams of heaven, I always see the great Masters gathered in a huge hall in which they all reside. Only Mozart has his own suite.
 * Victor Borge
 * Together with the puzzle, Mozart gives you the solution.
 * Ferruccio Busoni
 * If we cannot write with the beauty of Mozart, let us at least try to write with his purity.
 * Johannes Brahms
 * It is a real pleasure to see music so bright and spontaneous expressed with corresponding ease and grace.
 * Johannes Brahms
 * Mozart encompasses the entire domain of musical creation, but I've got only the keyboard in my poor head.
 * Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric Chopin
 * Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.
 * Aaron Copland
 * Mozart does not give the listener time to catch his breath, for no sooner is one inclined to reflect upon a beautiful inspiration than another appears, even more splendid, which drives away the first, and this continues on and on, so that in the end one is unable to retain any of these beauties in the memory.
 * Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf
 * Mozart began his works in childhood and a childlike quality lurked in his compositions until it dawned on him that the Requiem he was writing for a stranger was his own.
 * Will and Ariel Durant
 * Mozart is sweet sunshine.
 * Antonín Dvořák
 * Mozart is the greatest composer of all. Beethoven created his music, but the music of Mozart is of such purity and beauty that one feels he merely found it &mdash; that it has always existed as part of the inner beauty of the universe waiting to be revealed.
 * Albert Einstein
 * Mozart's music is particularly difficult to perform. His admirable clarity exacts absolute cleanness: the slightest mistake in it stands out like black on white.  It is music in which all the notes must be heard.
 * Gabriel Faur&eacute;
 * There are three things in the world I love most: the sea, Hamlet, and Don Giovanni.
 * Gustave Flaubert
 * Mozart's joy is made of serenity, and a phrase of his music is like a calm thought; his simplicity is merely purity. It is a crystalline thing in which all the emotions play a role, but as if already celestially transposed.  Moderation consists in feeling emotions as the angels do.
 * Andr&eacute; Gide
 * A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.
 * Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 * Mozart did not die too early, but rather too late.
 * Glenn Gould
 * In Mozart's music, all intensity are crystallized in the clearest, the most beautifully balanced and proportioned, and altogether flawless musical forms.
 * Phil Goulding
 * In Bach, Beethoven and Wagner we admire principally the depth and energy of the human mind; in Mozart, the divine instinct.
 * Edvard Grieg
 * Mozart never did too little and never too much; he always attains but never exceeds his goal.
 * Franz Grillparzer
 * When you listen to Mozart, the silence that follows is still Mozart.
 * Sacha Guitry
 * How can such a disproportionately large number of people have a definite, and unusually positive relationship to Mozart?
 * Wolfgang Hildesheimer
 * The riddle of Mozart is precisely that "the man" refuses to be a key for solving it. In death, as in life, he conceals himself behind his work.
 * Wolfgang Hildesheimer
 * Mozart's music is the mysterious language of a distant spiritual kingdom, whose marvelous accents echo in our inner being and arouse a higher, intensive life.
 * E.T.A. Hoffmann
 * Mozart said profound things and at the same time remained flippant and lively.
 * Michael Kennedy
 * Mozart has reached the boundary gate of music and leaped over it, leaving behind the old masters and moderns, and posterity itself.
 * A. Hyatt King
 * Mozart's music is so beautiful as to entice angels down to earth.
 * Franz Alexander von Kleist
 * The works of Mozart may be easy to read, but they are very difficult to interpret. The least speck of dust spoils them.  They are clear, transparent, and joyful as a spring, and not only those muddy pools which seem deep only because the bottom cannot be seen.
 * Wanda Landowska
 * For one moment in the history of music all opposites were reconciled; all tensions resolved; that luminous moment was Mozart.
 * Joseph Machlis
 * Mozart resolved his emotions on a level that transformed them into moods uncontaminated by mortal anguish, enabling him to express the angelic anguish that is so peculiarly his own.
 * Yehudi Menuhin
 * Mozart is happiness before it has gotten defined.
 * Arthur Miller
 * Mozart wrote everything with such ease and speed as might at first be taken for carelessness or haste. His imagination held before him the whole work clear and lively once it was conceived.  One seldom finds in his scores improved or erased passages.
 * Franz Niemetschek
 * There was nothing exceptional about the physical presence of this extraordinary man; he was small and his appearance gave no sign of his genius, apart from his large intense eyes. [...] But in this ungainly body there dwelt an artistic genius such as Nature rarely bestows even upon her most treasured darlings.
 * Franz Niemetschek
 * Mozart was able to do what he wished in music and he never wished to do what was beyond him.
 * Romain Rolland
 * Beethoven I take twice a week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day!
 * Gioacchino Rossini
 * Give Mozart a fairy tale and he creates without effort an immortal masterpiece.
 * Camille Saint-Sa&euml;ns
 * What gives Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great composers never sacrificed form to expression. As high as their expression may soar, their musical form remains supreme and all-efficient.
 * Camille Saint-Sa&euml;ns
 * A light, bright, fine day this will remain throughout my whole life. As from afar, the magic notes of Mozart's music still gently haunts me.
 * Franz Schubert
 * A world that has produced a Mozart is a world worth saving. What a picture of a better world you have given us, Mozart!
 * Franz Schubert
 * Does it not seem as if Mozart's works become fresher and fresher the oftener we hear them?
 * Robert Schumann
 * Designing an opera by Mozart is like doing something for God &mdash; it's a labor of love.
 * Maurice Sendak
 * The best of Mozart's works cannot be even slightly rewritten without diminishment.
 * Peter Shaffer
 * Mozart's music represents neither the prolonged sigh of faith that characterizes so much of the music written before his time, nor the stormy idealism which cloaks most music after him. Rather he is that mercurial balance of the skeptic and the humane.  Like him, and in him, we can always discover new worlds.
 * Joseph Solman
 * Mozart makes you believe in God because it cannot be by chance that such a phenomenon arrives into this world and leaves such an unbounded number of unparalleled masterpieces.
 * Georg Solti
 * Sometimes the impact of Mozart's music is so immediate that the vision in the mind remains blurred and incomplete, while the soul seems to be directly invaded, drenched in wave upon wave of melancholy.
 * Stendhal
 * I listened to the pure crystalline notes of one of Mozart's concertos dropping at my feet like leaves from the trees.
 * Virgil Thomson
 * Mozart touched no problem without solving it to perfection.
 * Donald Francis Tovey
 * Mozart's mental grip never loosens; he never abandons himself to any one sense; even at his most ecstatic moments his mind is vigorous, alert, and on the wing. He dives unerringly on to his finest ideas like a bird of prey, and once an idea is seized he soars off again with an undiminished power.
 * Walter J. Turner
 * Mozart's music is very mysterious.
 * Walter J. Turner
 * The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries and in all the arts.
 * Richard Wagner
 * Certain things in Mozart will and can never be excelled
 * Richard Wagner
 * I never heard so much content in so short a period.
 * Pinchas Zukerman

wrong citation
I'm not too active here so do correct me if I've got the protocol wrong. Note 3 ("Music is my life" ... etc.) seems to be wrong. I cannot find those words in any of the two volumes of Michael Kelly's Reminiscences. I note that another (correct) ref. to Kelly's Reminiscences (Note 5 for "melody is the essence of music") is a far more robust/complete citation and Note 3 and Note 5 link to the very same page (225). So I'm wondering if there was some slip in cutting and pasting or something like that. I'd love to find this quote if possible. Any hope? Thanks for listening and for leads, if any.


 * Thanks for bringing this to our attention. The IP who added the "Music is my life..." quote had previously posted another unsourced quote to the article – which was removed with the edit summary "revert unsourced statement, not found elsewhere attributed to Mozart, even without citations". To avoid this, the second time around they copied (part of) a citation from the unrelated quote you mentioned, just to try and give the actually-unsourced quote some credibility (which worked, no one removed it then). You are correct that the citation is wrong, so I'll be moving that quote from the article to the Unsourced section of this Talk page in the coming days, if no one can find a reliable source for it in the meantime. Regards ~ DanielTom (talk) 10:18, 21 June 2016 (UTC)