Ludwig van Beethoven Music Quotations

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.

Do you think I give a damn about your and your pathetic violin?

Music can change the world.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears form the eyes of woman.

To play without passion is inexcusable!

Don't only practise your art, but force your way into its secrets.

What will be the judgment a century hence concerning the lorded works of our favorite composers today? Inasmuch as nearly everything is subject to the changes of time, and - more's the pity- the fashions of time, only that which is good and true will endure like a rock and no wanton hand will ever venture to defile it. Then, let every man do that which is right, strive with all his might towards the goal which can never be obtained, develop to the last breath the gifts with which the gracious Creator has endowed him, and never cease to learn. For life is short, art eternal.

Richard Wagner commenting on the music of Ludvig Van Beethoven: He was a Titan, wrestling with the Gods.

It is the power of music to carry one directly into the mental state of the composer.

Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.