"Brahms" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of absolute music, it is sufficient to point to the fact that Germany produced two absolute musicians of the first class during Wagner's lifetime: one, the greatly gifted Goetz, who died young; the other, Brahms, whose absolute musical endowment was as extraordinary as his thought was commonplace. Wagner had for him the contempt of the original thinker for the man of second-hand ideas, and of the strenuously dramatic musician for mere brute musical faculty; ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... with a number of hirelings who drew a handsome salary for sitting around thinking noisy thoughts. Noisy thoughts, jarring thoughts, stunts like the concentration-interrupter of playing the first twenty notes of Brahms' Lullaby in perfect pitch and timing and then playing the twenty-first note in staccato and a half-tone flat. Making mental contact with Barcelona was approximately the analogue of eavesdropping upon the intimate cooing of a lover sweet-talking his lady in ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... way, you know, my dear... Rigoletto, Lucia, Traviata—the bel canto—that sort of thing; there's nothing like it for showing off the voice. Wagner's practically gone out (at least what I call out), and I always said Debussy wouldn't last. Paul La France still clings to Brahms—Brahms suits his voice better than anyone else. He always falls back on Brahms, and dear de Lara; and Tosti; of ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... line the piano cannot have been more than ten feet from the reader's chair; and the strain of reading aloud for an hour against a powerful rendering of the most vigorous compositions of Liszt, Wagner, Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin was a most trying ordeal for voice, brain and nerves. Mr. Pulitzer could apparently enjoy the music and the reading at the same time. Often, when something was played of which he knew the air, he would ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... the "Fetes Galantes" before he was ten; at eleven he could talk glibly, if rather reminiscently, of Brahms and Mozart and Beethoven. One afternoon, when left alone in the hotel at Hot Springs, he sampled his mother's apricot cordial, and as the taste pleased him, he became quite tipsy. This was fun for ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... into Robert Schumann's ken the work of a young fellow named Brahms, and the master cried aloud in the wilderness, "Behold, the new Messiah of music!" Many have refused to accept Brahms at this rating, and I confess to being one of the unregenerate, but the spirit that kept Schumann's heart open to the appeal of any stranger, that led him into instant ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... thirteen-line sonnet or a ten-act tragedy could not be expected to agree on the relative merits of Milton's and Wordsworth's sonnets. Unanimity of opinion is as impossible and undesirable concerning the poetic achievement of Browning and Whitman as it is concerning the music of Brahms and Wagner, or the painting of Turner and Whistler. Great artists who have taken liberties with traditions and precedents have done much to prevent the critics from falling into a state of self-complacency over their scientific methods ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... variety of articles, and in 1844 resigned the editor's chair to Brendel and removed to Duesseldorf. It was from Duesseldorf that he wrote his famous article about the newly-risen star of Johannes Brahms. ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... and that gave the power that raised the marvels of the world, the Duomo of Milan, the San Marco of Venice, the Cathedral of Florence. His the melody that breathed in the masses of Mozart, the sonatas of Beethoven, the oratorios of Handel, the fugues of Bach, the austere splendour of Brahms. His the Presence that cheered the solitary mystics, the hunted occultists, the patient seekers after truth. By persuasion and by menace, by the eloquence of a S. Francis and by the gibes of a Voltaire, by the sweet submission ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... however, certain names which stand out above all others and at the present writing appear destined for place among or very near the immortals of the first order. These great names are those of Johannes Brahms, Camille Saint-Saens, Peter Ilitsch Tschaikowsky, Antonin ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... records. "'Ave Maria,' Arcadelt-Liszt—no, though it's magnificent. That's the one you sing best of all, Beta. How often you've sung it to me! Remember, at the bungalow, how I used to lay my head in your lap while you played with my Samsonesque locks and sang me to sleep? Let's see—Brahms's 'Wiegenlied.' Cradle-song, eh? A little premature; that's coming later. Eh? Found it, by Jove! Here we are, the March itself, so help me! Shall ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... enables one man to dominate others: viz., a sense of leadership, or personal magnetism, as it is often called. Seidl asserts[5] that Berlioz, Massenet, and Saint-Saens likewise failed as conductors, in spite of recognized musicianship; and it is of course well known that even Beethoven and Brahms could not conduct their own works as well as some of their contemporaries whose names are now ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens |
