Composers from France

"As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note."

"Ah, music! What a beautiful art! But what a wretched profession!"

"I eat only white foods: eggs, sugar, grated bones, the fat of dead animals; veal, salt, coconut, chicken cooked in white water; fruit mold, rice, turnips; camphorated sausage, dough, cheese (white), cotton salad, and certain fish (skinless).""

"Étude pour un buste de M. Erik SATIE peint par lui-même, avec une pensée: je suis venu au monde très jeune dans un temps très vieux."

"On the first movement of Claude Debussy's La Mer, From Dawn to Noon: " Ah, my dear friend, there's one particular moment between half past ten and a quarter to eleven that I found stunning!" (with slight variations in phrasing and translation)"

"nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness."

"I took to my room and let small things evolve slowly."

"Postulez en vous-même."

"Munissez-vous de clairvoyance."

"Seul, pendant un instant."

"Très perdu."

"Ouvrez la tête."

"Superstitieusement."

"D'une manière très particulière."

"Léger comme un œuf."

"Comme un rossignol qui aurait mal aux dents."

"Citation de la célèbre mazurka de SCHUBERT"

"Modéré, je vous prie."

"Un peu chaud."

"Très turc."

"Then M. Ravel discussed another idea. That was that in these days of cacophony it might be quite an original idea for the orchestra to start, say, in C major, and then, through a series of discords the instruments should divide, some going up a semitone at every three or four bars, while others went down in the same way, eventually ending in perfect harmony in C major two octaves apart. He said: 'It is just an idea but it might be rather fun working it out and certainly a novel way of resolving harmony from discord.'"

"Mais est-ce qu'il ne vient jamais à l'idée de ces gens-là que je peux être 'artificiel' par nature?"

"I have the intention to dedicate Le Gibet to you. It is not because I think you merit a rope to hang yourself, but because it is the least difficult of the three pieces."

"Therefore we well observe that the title of perfect cadence is attached only to a dominant that progresses to the main tone, because this dominant, which is naturally contained within the harmony of the main tone, seems, when it progresses to it, to return as if to its source."

"In f-major, c* [a C major chord] is a sonority contained within the overtones of the tonic f* [a F major chord]."

"Cacher l’Art par l’Art lui même. Conceal Art by Art itself."

"Though he was no judge of librettos, Jean-Philippe Rameau raised the musical side of opera to a new level and in his ballets introduced many novel descriptive effects – the French loved these – such as the earthquake in Les Indes galantes."

"The colour of my soul is iron-grey and sad bats wheel about the steeple of my dreams."

"I confess that I am no longer thinking in musical terms, or at least not much, even though I believe with all my heart that Music remains for all time the finest means of expression we have. It’s just that I find the actual pieces — whether they’re old or modern, which is in any case merely a matter of dates — so totally poverty-stricken, manifesting an inability to see beyond the work-table. They smell of the lamp, not of the sun. And then, overshadowing everything, there’s the desire to amaze one’s colleagues with arresting harmonies, quite unnecessary for the most part. In short, these days especially, music is devoid of emotional impact. I feel that, without descending to the level of the gossip column or the novel, it should be possible to solve the problem somehow. There’s no need either for music to make people think! … It would be enough if music could make people listen, despite themselves and despite their petty mundane troubles, and never mind if they’re incapable of expressing anything resembling an opinion. It would be enough if they could no longer recognize their own grey, dull faces, if they felt that for a moment they had been dreaming of an imaginary country, that’s to say, one that can’t be found on the map."

"Collect impressions. Don’t be in a hurry to write them down. Because that’s something music can do better than painting: it can centralise variations of colour and light within a single picture — a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is."

"Every sound perceived by the acute ear in the rhythm of the world about us can be represented musically. Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear."

"The worship of Adonis is united with that of Christ."

"Do you really think that my music is devoid of religious antecedents? Do you wish to put an artist's soul under restraint? Do you find it difficult to conceive that one who sees mystery in everything — in the song of the sea, in the curve of the horizon, in the wind and in the call of the birds — should have been attracted to a religious subject? I have no profession of faith to utter to you: but, whichever my creed may be, no great effort on my part was needed to raise me to the height of d'Annunzio's mysticism. I can assure you that my music was written in exactly the spirit as if it had been commissioned for performance in church. Have I succeeded in expressing all that I felt? It is for others to decide. Is the faith which my music expresses orthodox? I do not know; but I can say that it is my own, expressed in all sincerity."

"I do not practise religion in accordance with the sacred rites. I have made mysterious Nature my religion. I do not believe that a man is any nearer to God for being clad in priestly garments, nor that one place in a town is better adapted to meditation than another. When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvelous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening the meadow, the gentle grass-carpetted earth, … and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration. … To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! … that is what I call prayer."

"I wish to write down my musical dreams in a spirit of utter self-detachment. I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naïve candour of a child. No doubt, this simple musical grammar will jar on some people. It is bound to offend the partisans of deceit and artifice. I foresee that and rejoice at it. I shall do nothing to create adversaries, but neither shall I do anything to turn enmities into friendships. I must endeavour to be a great artist so that I may dare to be myself and suffer for my faith. Those who feel as I do will only appreciate me more. The others will shun and hate me. I shall make no effort to appease them. On that distant day — I trust it is still very far off — when I shall no longer be a cause of strife, I shall feel bitter self-reproach. For that odious hypocrisy which enables one to please all mankind will inevitably have prevailed in those last works."

"The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always the hope that something dangerous may happen."

"Music should humbly seek to please; within these limits great beauty may perhaps be found. Extreme complication is contrary to art. Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part."

"A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn."

"Is it not our duty to find the symphonic formula which fits our time, one which progress, daring and modern victory demand? The century of airplanes has a right to its own music."

"People don't very much like things that are beautiful — they are so far from their nasty little minds."

"Music expresses the motion of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes."

"How much has to be explored and discarded before reaching the naked flesh of feeling."

"The music I desire must be supple enough to adapt itself to the lyrical effusions of the soul and the fantasy of dreams."

"There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law. I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth — an open-air art, boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art."

"Composers aren't daring enough. They're afraid of that sacred idol called "common sense", which is the most dreadful thing I know — after all, it's no more than a religion founded to excuse the ubiquity of imbeciles!"

"Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light."

"First of all, ladies and gentlemen, you must forget that you are singers."

"Music would take over at the point at which words become powerless, with the one and only object of expressing that which nothing but music could express. For this, I need a text by a poet who, resorting to discreet suggestion rather than full statement, will enable me to graft my dream upon his dream — who will give me plain human beings in a setting belonging to no particular period or country. … Then I do not wish my music to drown the words, nor to delay the course of the action. I want no purely musical developments which are not called for inevitably by the text. In opera there is always too much singing. Music should be as swift and mobile as the words themselves."

"Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art."

"Music is a mysterious mathematical process whose elements are part of Infinity. … There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little — the book of Nature."

"What I am trying to do is something different — an effect of reality, but what some fools call Impressionism, a term that is usually misapplied, especially by the critics who don't hesitate to apply it to Turner, the greatest creator of mysterious effects in the whole world of art."

"Music is the space between the notes."

"It is necessary to abandon yourself completely, and let the music do as it will with you. All people come to music to seek oblivion."

"Art is the most beautiful deception of all! And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory. … Let us not disillusion anyone by bringing too much reality into the dream."

"I believe the principle fault of the majority of writers and artists is having neither the will nor the courage to break with their successes, failing to seek new paths and give birth to new ideas. Most of them produce them twice, three, even four times. They have neither the courage nor the temerity to leave what is certain for what is uncertain. There is, however, no greater pleasure than going into the depth of oneself, setting one's whole being in motion and seeking for new and hidden treasures. What a joy to find something new in oneself, something that surprises even ourselves, filling us with warmth."

"Search for a discipline within freedom! Don't let yourelf be governed by formulae drawn from decadent philosophies: they are for the feeble-minded. Listen to no one's advice except that of the wind in the trees. That can recount the whole history of mankind..."

"To complete a work is just like being present at the death of someone you love."

"When Claude Debussy studied at the Paris Conservatory from age ten to age twenty-two, many considered him a rebel because of his treatment of dissonance and his disdain for the established forms. He reputedly turned to a fellow student during a performance of Beethoven with the words, “Let’s go. He’s starting to develop.”"

"I don't know what life would be like without music. In my lonely times, music has been my closest friend. It has also been my doctor-and my lover, in the sense that I sometimes listen to music and dream of a lover that doesn't exist. Late at night, when I don't feel sleepy, I'll play music-all types of music and lose myself in its mystery. I might decide to play Stevie Wonder, or Debussy, or Tchaikovsky. It depends on my mood."

"I love Italian opera — it’s so reckless. Damn Richard Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don’t care about their immortal souls, and don’t worry about the ultimate."

"Claude Debussy was a rare phenomenon — a composer profoundly and subversively revolutionary..."

"When asked by a grumpily puzzled professor what "rules" he followed, Debussy is said to have retorted, mon plaisir — "whatever I please" — and he further claimed that more was to be gained by watching the sun rise than by listening to the Pastoral Symphony. Although such remarks were intended to shock, they contain a core of Debussyan verity..."

"An examination of the harmonic techniques out of their context has all too often led to misleading terminology such as 'static' or 'non-functional' as a description of Debussy's harmonic methods. Viewed as a whole, however, the tonal coherence of his music depends upon a carefully calculated and often dramatic interaction of these various harmonic 'types' with each other and with orthodox diatonic harmony. The result is a tonal language, but one which is fundamentally different in concept from classical tonality. The detailed classifications of harmonic events is no longer possible in Debussy's music where the central tonality of a work emerges only through a constant focusing and re-focusing on harmonic types."

"The Sea of Debussy does not call for many words of comment. The three parts of which it is composed are entitled From Dawn till Noon, Play of the Waves and Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea, but as far as any pictorial suggestiveness is concerned, they might as well have been entitled On the Flatiron Building, Slumming in the Bowery and A Glimpse of Chinatown During a Raid. Debussy's music is the dreariest kind of rubbish. Does anybody for a moment doubt that Debussy would not write such chaotic, meaningless, cacophonous, ungrammatical stuff, if he could invent a melody?... Even his orchestration is not particularly remarkable."

"Among all our musical masters, l should say, Claude Debussy was the least weighed upon by the dead hand of formula. Yet neither was he an improviser. This latter art, indeed, among all the compositional techniques, is the one most servile to rules of thumb. Debussy's operation was more thorough. Like any Frenchman building a bridge or cooking a meal, painting a picture or laying out a garden, he felt, he imagined, he reasoned, he constructed—and in that order."

"Myth does not set out to give lessons in natural science any more than in morals or sociology."

"Myth therefore seems to choose history, rather than be chosen by it."

"[A]ny musician who has not experienced - I do not say understood, but truly experienced - the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch."

"Creation exists only in the unforeseen made necessary."

"Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

"Our musical alphabet is poor and illogical. Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor. Why, Italian Futurists, have you slavishly reproduced only what is commonplace and boring in the bustle of our daily lives. I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm."

"Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes."

"Contrary to general belief, an artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs. I was the first composer to explore, so to speak, musical outer space."

"I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena. As a child, I was tremendously impressed by the qualities and character of the granite I found in Burgundy, where I often visited my grandfather...So I was always in touch with things of stone and with this kind of pure structural architecture — without frills or unnecessary decoration. All of this became an integral part of my thinking at a very early stage."

"There is an idea, the basis of an internal structure, expanded and split into different shapes or groups of sound constantly changing in shape, direction, and speed, attracted and repulsed by various forces. The form of the work is a consequence of this interaction. Possible musical forms are as limitless as the exterior forms of crystals."

"Give me a kiss, dearest lover. I'm certain that you still love me, and I fear you always, like some tyrant over me. I don't know why, but I fear you. Upon my word, only you have power over me, you and... no one else."

"I'm glad that the secret is submerged in my heart, that in me is the end of what is for you the beginning. And be glad that you have in me an abyss into which you can cast everything without fear - as if into a second self - because your spirit has long lain there at the very bottom. I keep your letters like a ribbon from a mistress. I have the ribbon; write to me, I'll caress you again in a week."

"No one other than I has read your letter. As always, even now, I carry your letters with me. How blissful it will it be for me, having gone beyond the city walls in May, thinking about my approaching journey, to pull out a letter of yours and assure myself sincerely that you love me, or at least to gaze at the hand and the writing of him, whom only I am able to love!"

"Messieurs, I should like to be granted the favour of performing at one of your admirable concerts, and this I beg to ask of you. Trusting, since I lack other qualifications to obtain this, in your goodwill towards artists, I dare to hope that you will greet my request favourably, I have the honour to be, Messieurs, your very humble servant. Frédéric Chopin Cité Bergère, No. 4"

"My piano has not yet arrived. How did you send it? By Marseilles or by Perpignan? I dream music but I cannot make any because here there are not any pianos . . . in this respect this is a savage country."

"I'm a revolutionary, money means nothing to me."

"I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them."

"One needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to the keys to obtain with ease the most beautiful sounds, to know how to play long notes and short notes and to [attain] certain unlimited dexterity... A well formed technique, it seems to me, [is one] that can control and vary a beautiful sound quality."

"Time is still the best critic, and patience the best teacher."

"Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano!"

"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."

"How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life.... Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!... Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state..."

"Here you doubtless observe my tendency to do wrong against my will. As something has involuntarily crept into my head through my eyes, I love to indulge it, even though it may be all wrong."

"I could express my feelings more easily if they could be put into the notes of music, but as the very best concert would not cover my affection for you, dear daddy, I must use the simple words of my heart, to lay before you my utmost gratitude and filial affection"

"How great a joy I feel in my heart. That a day so pleasant, so dear and glorious begins, a day that I greet with the wish. That long years may pass in happiness. In health and vigour, peacefully, successfully. May the gift of heaven fall richly upon you"

"You already know when I'm writing, so don't be surprised if it's short and dry, because I'm too hungry to write anything fat"

"I have met Rossini, Cherubini, Baillot, etc.—also Kalkbrenner. You would not believe how curious I was about Herz, Liszt, Hiller, etc. — They are all zero beside Kalkbrenner. I confess that I have played like Herz, but would wish to play like Kalkbrenner. If Paganini is perfection, Kalkbrenner is his equal, but in quite another style."

"I astonished Kalkbrenner, who at once asked me, was I not a pupil of Field, because I have Cramer's method and Field's touch. (That delighted me.)"

"Play Mozart in memory of me— and I will hear you."

"Concerts are never real music, you have to give up the idea of hearing in them all the most beautiful things of art."

"I am cross and depressed, and people bore me with their excessive attentions. I can't breathe, I can't work; I feel alone, alone, alone, although I am surrounded. There are a whole lot of ladies, 70 to 80 year-old lords, but no young folk: they are all out shooting. One can't get out of doors because it has been raining and blowing for several days."

"Fingers of steel. Wrist of silk."

"[...] mam mój ideał, któremu wiernie, nie mówiąc z nim już pół roku, służę, który mi się śni, na którego pamiątkę stanęło adagio od mojego koncertu, który mi inspirował tego walczyka dziś rano, co ci posyłam."

"Idę się umywać, nie całuj mię teraz, bom się jeszcze nie umył. — Ty? chociażbym się olejkami wysmarował bizantyjskimi, nie pocałowałbyś, gdybym ja Ciebie magnetycznym sposobem do tego nie przymusił. Jest jakaś siła w naturze. Dziś Ci się śnić będzie, że mnie całujesz. Muszę Ci oddać za szkaradny sen, jakiś mi dziś w nocy sprowadził."

"Nothing is more beautiful than a good guitar, save perhaps two."

"Chopin‘s pianistic production is overall more voluminous and somewhat more consistent in emotional substance, however wonderful much of Schumann‘s work is."

"Chopin did not need to append words to music to make it songful; in fact it seems to me that he does better without them! Incidentally, their lack of popularity must largely be due to their being set to Polish words, and as far as I know, translating them would lessen their effect."

"Chopin is -- popularly, but not critically -- seen primarily as a great melodist, which reputation does him a great disservice."

"...Chopin rather made a habit out of gainsaying genre expectations: his Barcarolle isn’t a barcarolle, the Scherzi aren’t even remotely funny or even lighthearted, the Waltzes are completely undanceable, the Preludes aren’t prelude to anything, the Nocturnes render Field unlistenable…"

"Chopin wrote many small pieces – mazurkas, waltzes, préludes, nocturnes – many more than Schumann. That covers the needs of millions of amateurs who love music, but do not command the instrument well enough and who love Chopin’s music. It enters their hearts."

"Chopin is played much more than Schumann in China, both in concert halls and music schools. The reason, if I put it in a most simple and direct way, Chopin is more universal, appeals more to the masses. Schumann is more personal, appeals more to the elites."

"Being Chopin a pianist himself, his works are mainly conceived for the piano. When people use the word “pianistic“, it means that the pieces lay easily, naturally and smoothly under the fingers. This is true for Liszt and Debussy too."

"Music was his language, the divine tongue through which he expressed a whole realm of sentiments that only the select few can appreciate... The muse of his homeland dictates his songs, and the anguished cries of Poland lend to his art a mysterious, indefinable poetry which, for all those who have truly experienced it, cannot be compared to anything else... The piano alone was not sufficient to reveal all that lies within him. In short he is a most remarkable individual who commands our highest degree of devotion."

"According to a tradition—and, be it said, an erroneous one—Chopin’s playing was like that of one dreaming rather than awake—scarcely audible in its coninual pianissiomos and una cordoas, with feebly developed technique and quite lacking in confidence, or at least indistinct, and distorted out of all rhythmic form by an incessant tempo rubato! The effect of these notions could not be otherwise than very prejudicial to the interpretation of his works, even by the most able artists—in their very striving after truthfulness; besides, they are easily accounted for."

"In keeping time Chopin was inflexible, and many will be surprised to learn that the metronome never left his piano. Even in his oft-decried tempo rubato one hand—that having the accompaniment—always played on in strict time, while the other, singing the melody, either hesitating as if undecided, or, with increased animation, anticipating with a kind of impatient vehemence as if in passionate utterances, maintained the freedom of musical expression from the fetters of strict regularity."

"His creation was spontaneous, miraculous. He found it without searching for it, without foreseeing it. It came to his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he would hasten to hear it again by, tossing it off on his instrument. But then would begin the most heartbreaking labor I have ever witnessed. It was a series of efforts, indecision, and impatience to recapture certain details of the theme he had heard: what had come to him all of a piece, he now over-analyzed in his desire to write it down, and his regret at not finding it again "neat," as he said, would throw him into a kind of despair. He would shut himself up in his room for days at a time, weeping, pacing, breaking his pens, repeating and changing a single measure a hundred times, writing it and effacing it with equal frequency, and beginning again the next day with a meticulous and desperate perseverance. He would spend six weeks on one page, only to end up writing it just as he had traced it in his first outpouring."

"There is no weak piece by Chopin. Still, his music is played so poorly so often, and that does not do him any good. The Sonata in B flat minor and the ballad in G minor are played much very often. It does not mean I wouldn’t play them, but I wouldn’t do it so much."

"It was Chopin who properly set romantic pianism on its rails and gave it the impetus that shows no signs of deceleration. He did this all by himself, evolving from nowhere the most beautiful and original piano style of the century."

"Chopin was a romantic who hated romanticism. This is the paradox. It was Chopin who, of all the early romantics, has turned out the most popular. Virtually everything he composed has remained in the repertoire, and a piano recital without some Chopin on it is still the exception. […] In his day he was a revolutionary. To many his music was exotic, inexplicable, perhaps insane. Critics like Rellstab in Germany, Chorley and Davison in England, dismissed much of Chopin’s music as eccentricities full of earsplitting dissonance."

"Fortunately the picture as it stands is quite complete, and the figure of Chopin clearly emerges: that marvelously controlled, original, poetic, nuanced classic-romantic pianist and musician, whose physical resources may have been small but whose spirit and conception were epical."

"Hats off, gentlemen — a genius!"

"If the mighty autocrat of the north knew what a dangerous enemy threatened him in Chopin's works in the simple tunes of his mazurkas, he would forbid this music. Chopin's works are canons buried in flowers."

"After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own."

"We couldn’t do much outside. I found more details in my music."

"Chopin was the first piano composer who knew exactly how to make piano sound reach fullness, radiance and grandness. What to regard and what, by all means, to avoid. Chopin was keenly aware of the overtones and he did take care of them so artfully."

"Chopin has done for the piano what Schubert has done for the voice."

"I think the art of filmmaking is something you learn through actions, by doing it, not by learning theories. And as you do it, your mind starts to change."

"At that time they said I was crazy because I wanted to make a movie that was 14 or 16 hours. But now people do it. There are three—"Hobbit 1," "Hobbit 2," "Hobbit 3." Everything I wanted to do is possible to do today."

"When we didn't make the picture, Dan O'Bannon needed to be interned in a mental institution for two years, suffering because we didn't get to do "Dune." And when he came out he wrote the script for "Alien." "Alien" was the reaction to not doing "Dune." Who would believe that? But it's true!"

"Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness."

"For art to be art it has to cure."

"It is useless to know the future if one ignores who one is here in the moment. (...) The more I advance, the more I notice that all problems stem from the genealogy tree. To enter into a person's difficulties is to enter into his family, to penetrate the psychological atmosphere of his domestic milieu. We are all marked, not to say contaminated, by the psychomental universe of our people. A number of people have associated with them a personality that is not theirs, one that is borrowed from one or more members of their emotional environment. To be born into a family is to be, if I may say it this way, possessed. This possession is transmitted from generation to generation: the enchanted becomes the enchanter in projecting onto his children what was projected onto him—unless an awakening comes to break the cycle. (...) For the awakening to become operable, I must make the person act, lead them to commit a very precise act, but I must do so without taking charge or assuming the role of guide regarding their life."

"We only have problems we really want to have."

"The people with low level of consciousness look for someone else to affirm their value, but people with higher levels of consciousness, what they seek is someone to point out their defects so they can become better."

"That is the marvel of true art, that no one has yet found a way to commercialize it."

"But everyone in the world has a cross. Mine is mine, yours is yours: I only can make you conscious of your cross and, apart from that, you free yourself or not. This depends on you."

"If we want to transform reality, we begin with ourselves. We do not ask the world to change, and we do not fight against society. It has to be us ourselves who affirm our own values."

"Many people effectively stop carrying out what it's called "life's a movie." The majority of people want to be like others, and this drives them to a death in life. It is necessary to find what distinguishes us from others in order to be something. To the extent that we try to be like others, we convert ourselves into zombies."

"We have to stop thinking that God is going to fix everything and saying that if God made everything bad in this universe then we are here to do to, too, again. If there is a God, we are here to help him. This requires that we take possession of the world and of ourselves. We must do what we want to do with full consciousness and with full responsibility. In this level of divine consciousness, we find true art."

"Family hurts us, it is like a trap, it shortens our life, it bothers us psychically and socioculturally, it forces us into a limited level of consciousness, it robs us of our essential self, it inculcates ideas in us that are not our own, and at the moment when we find ourselves in the world, all of this collapses and we have to build a life from scratch. We forgive ourselves because no one is guilty. Generation after generation, each one is victim to the one before. We end up with many centuries of being victims, but in the end you understand that there is no reason for resentment."

"We need to work in a job that we like and always be peaceful people, to do what we like. We must be what we are and not what they want us to be. To love what we love without obligation, without neurotic knots that we cannot untie. To desire what we want and to create what we are capable of making. To live with a certain prosperity, without wasting. But a prosperity for everyone, not a prosperity based on exploiting others. And, of course, it is necessary to become immortals and for this we have to live as if we were immortals thinking that we have a thousand years more to do what we want but without forgetting that in ten seconds we can die."

"At a certain age, you have to make yourself useful for others. When you have lived and life has given you an experience, whether good or bad, the moment arrives when you should pass on what you know. Rather than turn into a dumb old person, you should go further every time. Aging does not exist, neither does mental decline. The memory can have less capacity to find a word or maybe you can feel less sexual desire, less virulence, but there is no reason for desire to have disappeared. If, during your life you have worked the emotions, when you mature you begin to know sublime feelings, which you did not have when you were young because nature did not let you. It takes forty years to find yourself. The true opening of the consciousness cannot be had before this age. From there, the journey begins."

"I remember some artists who said this world isn't worth anything, that it is a pigsty, that we are going nowhere, that God is dead, and all those things. Bad literature is this. To expose your navel, to tell how you drank your morning coffee amid general disgust, with everything around you rotting. While the world is dying, I drink my coffee. Or I perform my little sex acts. This is old-fashioned. One must cross this neurotic curtain."

"Beauty is the maximum limit we can access through language. We cannot reach the truth, but we can get close to it through beauty."

"The symbolic act of the death of the father is absolutely necessary, but it is also necessary to do it in an intelligent way, with lucidity and without resentment. If you perceive your father in a violent way, it is because you are not killing him: you are asking him to love you because you need it. But if you are able to see him positively, without his pedestal and without your fear, you are no longer begging him to love you in order for you to exist. And this is when you kill him, when you make him fall. But once you've knocked him down, it is necessary to rebuild him and repay him, because fathers have essential value, even if they are monsters: they give us life, they leave their imprint on certain parts of our being, and they allow us to become who we are in a conscious way."

"When we do something we have never done, we are already on the road to healing. We must break the routines."

"No one fulfills himself fully. What is fulfilling oneself? Advancing as one can."

"Tenemos que ser muy conscientes de que debajo de cada enfermedad hay una prohibición. Una prohibición que viene de una superstición."

"Addictions come from shortages in infancy. People try to compensate this way. Alcoholism is generally produced from a shortage in mother's milk. And heroin addiction is usually due to a lack of being, the absence of recognition; the drug fills the emptiness of not being loved."

"The person who does not control his territory does not control his existence. If someone is not conscious, he is taken over, not only outwardly but also with the thoughts that assault him. He is very vulnerable to desires and feelings. For example, you live calmly with your wife, and then—catastrophe! Suddenly you lose control because you have fallen in love with another. You don't have to fall victim to that reality; what you have to do is navigate in it, overcome the winds and sandstorms. Amid the storms at sea and the signs, you must move forward calmly and look toward the port you're heading for. In New York, when I was filming The Holy Mountain, I had problems of all sorts. I soaked six or seven T-Shirts a night with my sweat. I went to see a Chinese sage that someone had recommended. He was a poet, a great master of tai chi, and a doctor. When he first saw me, he said, "What is your purpose in life?" I was disconcerted and did not answer. He continued, "If you do not tell me what is your purpose in life, I cannot heal you." So I understood that if a ship crosses the sea without a purpose, it will arrive at no port. What prevents life from devouring us is having a purpose. The higher it is, the further it will carry us..."

"I say: "What you give, you give to yourself; what you do not give, you give up." And this is to say that whatever you do in the world, you do to yourself; and whatever you do not give to the world, you lose. If I keep my knowledge, I lose it. (...) One receives knowledge and gives it. When you give knowledge, you enrich yourself. If you do not give love, you are detracting from yourself. If I begin to help people, if I begin to heal people, I begin to heal. Do you understand? To be a therapist, you have to be a patient. The first thing to do to heal yourself is to heal others. I have one more saying: "I do not want anything for myself that I do not want for others"."

"To transform oneself one must give, but to transform oneself one must also learn. One closes oneself off and does not admit love from another, the tenderness or the help of another. The real leap is learning to receive, which is as difficult as learning to give. And it is necessary to learn to ask for what one needs: justice is to give to oneself what one deserves. This is why the gospels say, "Knock and the door will be opened." If I ask for a long life, it is because I have the right to ask for it. If I ask that we will use an energy other than oil, it is because I have the right to ask for it. We have to learn to ask for what is just and to not ask for what it is not necessary to ask."

"Once centenarian teacher who had the body of an adolescent told me he had studied martial arts. "Me, too," I answered. We were in Notre Dame, and he said, "Attack me." I put myself in a combat position, and he moved his left hand in such an incredibly beautiful way that while I looked at it, fascinated, he gave me a big slap. "Beauty is the most dangerous weapon," he warned. It took me a long time to understand. He used a secret Chinese practice, which consists of drawing a snake in the air with your hand to distract the enemy. And that is how beauty is: the most awful weapon."

"Allons enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé! Contre nous de la tyrannie, L'étendard sanglant est levé, (bis) Entendez-vous dans les campagnes Mugir ces féroces soldats? Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes! Aux armes, citoyens, Formez vos bataillons, Marchons, marchons! Qu'un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons!"

"To arms! to arms! ye brave! The avenging sword unsheathe! March on! march on! all hearts resolved On victory or death!"

"Et musique est une science Qui veut qu'on rie et chante et dance. Cure n'a de merencolie, Ne d'homme qui merencolie A chose qui ne puet valoir, Eins met tels gens en nonchaloir. Partout ou elle est joie y porte; Les desconfortez reconforte, Et nes seulement de l'oir Fait elle les gens resjoir."

"Qui de sentement ne fait, Son dit et son chant contrefait."

"Et quant ma maladie Garie Ne sera nullement Sans vous, douce anemie, Qui lie Estes de mon tourment, A jointes mains deprie Vo cuer, puis qu'il m'oublie, Que temprement m'ocie, Car trop langui longuement. Douce dame jolie, Pour dieu ne penses mie Que nulle ait signourie Seur moy fors vous seulement."

"Ma fin est mon commencement Et mon commencement ma fin."

"Be·l saupra plus cobert far! Mas non a chans pretz enter, Can tuch no·n son parsoner."

"Qu'eu cut c'atretan grans sens Es, qui sap razo gardar, Com los motz entrebeschar."

"Bel companho, en chantan vos apel! No dormatz plus, qu'eu auch chantar l'auzel Que vai queren lo jorn per lo boschatge Et ai paor que.l gilos vos assatge Et ades sera l'alba."

"Bel dous companh, tan sui en ric sojorn Qu'eu no volgra mais fos l'alba ni jorn, Car la gensor que anc nasques de maire Tenc et abras, per qu'eu non prezi gaire Lo fol gilos ni l'alba."

"E fo meiller trobaire que negus d'aquels qu'eron estat denan ni foron après lui; per que fo apellatz maestre dels trobadors, et es ancar per totz aquels que ben entendon subtils ditz ni ben pauzatz d'amor e de sen."

"E si tot venta'ill freg'aura, L'amor qu'ins el cor mi pleu Mi ten caut on plus iverna."

"Ieu sui Arnautz qu'amas l'aura E cas la lebre ab lo bueu E nadi contra suberna."

"En breu brizara'l temps braus E'l biza, e'l brus e'l blancx Qui s'entresenhon trastuig De sobre claus ram de fuelha."

""O frate," disse, "chesti qu'io ti cerno col ditto," e additò un spirto innanzi, "fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno. Versi d'amore e prose di romanzi soverchiò tutti; e lascia dir li stolti che quel di Lemosì credon ch'avanzi."

"Fra tutti il primo Arnaldo Danïello Gran maestro d'amor; ch'a la sua terra Ancor fa onor col suo dir strano e bello."

"Mas greu veiretz fin' amansa ses paor e ses doptansa, c'ades tem om vas so c'ama, falhir, per qu'eu no·m aus de parlar enardir."

"Can vei la lauzeta mover De joi sas alas contra·l rai, Que s'oblid'e·s laissa chazer Per la doussor c'al cor li vai, Ai, tan grans enveya m'en ve De cui qu'eu veya jauzïon."

"D'aisso's fa be femna parer Ma domna, per qu'e·lh o retrai, Car no vol so c'om deu voler, E so c'om li deveda, fai."

"Chantars no pot gaire valer, Si d'ins dal cor no mou lo chans! Ni chans no pot dal cor mover, Si no i es fin' amors coraus."

"Aisso non es amors; aitaus No·n a mas lo nom e·l parven, Que re non ama si no pren."

"Something new has been added, a new art of sound. Am I wrong in calling it music?"

"I do not want to heap coals of fire on anyone's head, but I would like to advise those who keep the living thought of the dead hidden away in cardboard boxes, to pass on as quickly as possibly such explosive material, whose only legitimate heir is the whole world, that is to say, my neighbor."

"I was horrified by modern 12-tone music. I said to myself, 'Maybe I can find something different... maybe salvation, liberation, is possible.'"

"Barbarians always think of themselves as the bringers of civilization."

"Sound is the vocabulary of nature... noises are as well articulated as the words in a dictionary... Opposing the world of sound is the world of music."

"People who try to create a musical revolution do not have a chance, but those who turn their back to music can sometimes find it."

"Music has to do with sounds, so we need to find them somewhere and it is preferred to find musical ones. You have two sources for sounds: noises, which always tell you something — a door cracking, a dog barking, the thunder, the storm; and then you have instruments. An instrument tells you, 'la-la-la-la.' Music has to find a passage between noises and instruments. It has to escape. It has to find a compromise and an evasion at the same time; something that would not be dramatic because that has no interest to us, but something that would be more interesting than sounds like Do-Re-Mi-Fa..."

"We live in an age dominated by the problem of limits. We are witnessing the end of progress. We have reached the saturation point. Are we going beyond these limits? Are we going to take the risk? There is much work to do to maintain the planet."

"A plural man with a singular career, he has managed to warn, surprise, shock, and invent."

"In the world of Pierre Schaeffer, experimentation and entertainment were synonymous; any division between the avant-garde and the everyday simply did not exist."

"C'est la vraie voix féminine de l'orchestre, voix passionnée et chaste en même temps, déchirante et douce, qui pleure et crie et se lamente, ou chante et prie et rêve, ou éclate en accents joyeux, comme nulle autre pourrait le faire."

"L'auteur de ce Prophète a non seulement le bonheur d'avoir du talent, mais aussi le talent d'avoir du bonheur."

"Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on; le malheur est qu'il soit un maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves."

"Pauvres diables!... D'où sortent ces malheureux êtres ?... À quel Montfaucon vont-ils mourir ?... Que leur octroie la munificence municipale pour nettoyer (ou salir) ainsi le pavé de Paris ?... À quel âge les envoie-t-on à l'équarrissage ?... Que fait-on de leurs os ? (leur peau n'est bonne à rien.)"

"Cette face de l’instrumentation est exactement, en musique, ce que le coloris est en peinture."

"Un chanteur ou une cantatrice capable de chanter seize mesures seulement de bonne musique avec une voix naturelle, bien posée, sympathique, et de les chanter sans efforts, sans écarteler la phrase, sans exagérer jusqu'à la charge les accents, sans platitude, sans afféterie, sans mièvreries, sans fautes de français, sans liaisons dangereuses, sans hiatus, sans insolentes modifications du texte, sans transposition, sans hoquets, sans aboiements, sans chevrotements, sans intonations fausses, sans faire boiter le rhythme, sans ridicules ornements, sans nauséabondes appogiatures, de manière enfin que la période écrite par le compositeur devienne compréhensible, et reste tout simplement ce qu'il l'a faite, est un oiseau rare, très-rare, excessivement rare."

"Je ne puis m'empêcher de rendre grâces au hasard qui m'a mis dans la nécessité de parvenir à composer silencieusement et librement, en me garantissant ainsi de la tyrannie des habitudes des doigts, si dangereuses pour la pensée."

"Shakespeare, en tombant ainsi sur moi à l'improviste, me foudroya. Son éclair, en m'ouvrant le ciel de l'art avec un fracas sublime, m'en illumina les plus lointaines profondeurs. Je reconnus la vraie grandeur, la vraie beauté, la vraie vérité dramatiques."

"Vous me priez de vous dire…S'il est vrai que l'acte de foi de tout ce qui prétend aimer l'art élevé et sérieux soit celui-ci : "Il n'y a pas d'autre Dieu que Bach, et Mendelssohn est son prophète"?"

"In the period between the death of Beethoven and about 1860, the symphony without a programme might have been considered moribund, and the present (and thus the future) could have been perceived to belong to music that was explicitly poetic. Although numerous composers contributed to this trend, Berlioz has left perhaps the largest footprints in this particular geological stratum. Berlioz was perceived by the poet and critic Gautier as one of a trinity of French Romanticism, with Victor Hugo and Eugene Delacroix, but this is more an indication of his perceived stature as a major outsider than to any artistic affinity."

"One of my neighbours rises from his seat and bending towards the orchestra shouts in a voice of thunder: "You don't want two flutes there, you brutes! You want two piccolos, do you hear? Oh, the brutes!" Having said that, he simply sits down again, scowling indignantly. Amidst the general tumult produced by this outburst, I turn around and see a young man trembling with passion, his hands clenched, his eyes flashing, and a head of hair - such a head of hair. It looked like an enormous umbrella of hair, projecting something like a moveable awning over a beak of a bird of prey."

"The high forehead, precipitously overhanging the deep-set eyes, the great curving hawk-nose, the thin, finely-cut lips, the rather short chin, the enormous shock of light-brown hair against the fantastic wealth of which the barber could do nothing–whoever had seen this head would never forget it."

"I think that you have to seriously have fun, or taking serious things in a light way and obviously, for me, before all, music is made of fun and pleasure and excitement."

"At a very early stage I realised that it's a real problem to perform electronic music on stage because electronic instruments are not particularly convincing on a visual point of view: somebody behind his computer, it's not particularly visual. So I was inspired by the opera. And what was the opera in the 19th century? It was the idea for a musician to join and to work, to collaborate with a stage director, with carpenters, painters, people doing decors, graphic artists to have a visual prolongation, a visual correspondence to their work. That's what I tried to do with the tools of my generation: electronics and video and lights and all that."

"Music is geometry in time."

"Old age doth in sharp pains abound; We are belabored by the gout, Our blindness is a dark profound, Our deafness each one laughs about. Then reason's light with falling ray Doth but a trembling flicker cast. Honor to age, ye children pay! Alas! my fifty years are past!"

"Ye Gods! but she is wondrous fair! For me her constant flame appears; The garland she hath culled, I wear On brows bald since my thirty years. Ye veils that deck my loved one rare, Fall, for the crowning triumph's nigh. Ye Gods! but she is wondrous fair! And I, so plain a man am I!"

"In Paris a queer little man you may see, A little man all in gray; Rosy and round as an apple is he, Content with the present whate'er it may be, While from care and from cash he is equally free, And merry both night and day! "Ma foi! I laugh at the world." says he, "I laugh at the world, and the world laughs at me!" What a gay little man in gray."

"Nos amis, les ennemis."

"Quoique leurs chapeaux sont bien laids, Goddam! j'aime les anglais."

"Adieu! 'tis love's last greeting, The parting hour is come! And fast thy soul is fleeting To seek its starry home."

"Ce n'est que lorsqu'il expira Que le peuple, qui l'enterra, pleura."

"Each year his mighty armies marched forth in gallant show, Their enemies were targets, their bullets they were tow."

"Gaily! gaily! close our ranks! Arm! Advance! Hope of France! Gaily! gaily! close our ranks! Onward! Onward! Gauls and Franks!"

"And while expecting me to be the more free I could be, he pushed me to my own corners, always asking for more. More freedom, more experiments, more noise, more trash, more, more."

"It was a fascinating experience where I literally wrote and recorded music live on the picture while Fabrice was screaming "more, more", yelling and singing to finally explode together in a "yeahhhhhh, that's fucking great!""

"We thought about the movie as a global piece of work, not picture, then voices, then music."

"I think my work is unusual, so when someone comes to me, it's rarely to ask me some Zimmer shit, even though it happens sometimes. When it happens, I do my best to write decent / elegant music that could match their needs and mine. But mostly, people want me to be myself."

"My own story is like a fairy tale nobody would believe because it's exactly what you expect but it never happened."

"I worked carefully in the darkness and the silence."

"I love working on genre films."

"I enjoy a freedom of tone and experimentation unparalleled, almost unthinkable in more traditional films — producers are becoming more conservative, dramatically."

"Finally, the role of sound in these films is very important, and directors give it a lot of attention. We work hard, we try, it is not just enough to illustrate. We must build a character in its own music."

"But there are constants. The first is anxiety, because you have to reinvent an entire personal universe from that of another, understanding the film, its form, its rhythm, its colors."

"Chanfrault is one of the few French musicians to accommodate both a classical and a true technological expertise."

"François-Eudes Chanfrault is a young French musician who participated in the soundtrack for ' , a thriller by , before he distinguished himself by his compositions and electronic offset to the documentaries of (including that of ')."

"She relates how she then viewed his body at the morgue, while a long static shot of the park where the murder took place unspools, backed by Francois Eudes Chanfrault's sparse, sorrowful, string-based score."

"Much attention has been paid … to the music of François-Eudes Chanfrault, composer of The Hills Have Eyes."

"The director/writer team is friends and fans of another French duo, Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur, responsible for the blood-drenched Haute Tension. Logically, they have chosen to share the same editor (Baxter) and composer (François-Eudes Chanfrault), resulting in equally effective jackknife editing and a sonorous score."

"Donkey Punch is powered by claustrophobic menace and a notably effective score, by François-Eudes Chanfrault, that features spectral synths and the eerie clack of electro-castanets."

"Between survival and the camera bobbing at sea, the film draws from its cast and some convincing gore scenes well, all on a trippy soundtrack by François-Eudes Chanfrault ({{w|Vinyan]], The Hills Have Eyes)."

"The film is supported by its strong, vivid images and a hypnotic score by François-Eudes Chanfrault (known by his equally great music for Inside)."

"...the frenetic pace, driven by the music which is sometimes metal, and sometimes seraphic, of François-Eudes Chanfrault."

"The whole is supported by a soundtrack by François-Eudes Chanfrault that is absolutely remarkable."

"We went to the Opera to hear music of the vanguard, Maximilian by Darius Milhaud. We clutched our chair. But we were hurled out of it by such a hurricane of wrong notes that we found ourselves, half dead, on the stairway, without knowing how we could fall down quite so far. The composer knows the grammar, the spelling and the language; but he can speak only Esperanto and Volapuk. It is a work of a Communist traveling salesman."

"Nothing is more difficult than talking about music: if it is a prickly business for musicians, it is almost impossible for anyone else—the strongest, subtlest minds go astray."

"I’m becoming daily more and more misanthropic and misogynous…nothing worthwhile, good or useful to do… no one to devote myself to. My situation makes me horridly sad and wretched. Even musical production has lost its attraction for me for I can’t see the point or goal."

"Alkan possessed the finest technique he had ever known, but preferred the life of a recluse."

"A tall, hulking man walked on to the stage at Carnegie Hall last week, bent himself into an awkward bow at the piano, and played superbly Bach’s Partita No. 2 in C Minor, three Scarlatti sonatas, Schumann’s C Major Fantasia and the first book of Debussy preludes. He was Walter Gieseking, come from Germany for another extended tour, and he played, as he has always played, music that he himself has tried truly and found good."

"Three seasons have passed since Gieseking made an inconspicuous dé in Æolian Hall, Manhattan (TIME, Feb. 22, 1926). “His European notices were so superlative,” said Manager Charles L. Wagner afterward, “I knew no one would believe them so I decided to let his music speak for itself.”"

"His music spoke so eloquently that Sunday afternoon that members of the small audience told their friends. No one, according to some, had ever played Bach like Gieseking, and they rhapsodized over an amazing technic, a style that was as fluent and easy as it was immaculate. But his Bach, others said, could not compare with his Debussy which surely was the essence of poetry. The controversy, as over most artistic matters, might have been endless, for Gieseking is not a specialist."

"He is, critics say unanimously, a great musician. To appraise him seems almost impertinent and so they write of his playing in awkward, halting sentences which struggle with big words like “pellucid” and “perfection.”"

"Unforgettable were Kreisleriana, Davidsbündlertänze, the Bach Variations by Reger. Those three—unforgettable. You know, he wasn't a man to study much. He left everything to the intuition. Sometimes it worked and sometimes not. But his sound was out of place in Beethoven, I thought. And I didn't appreciate him very much as an interpreter of Debussy—which might sound strange, because he was so well known as a Debussy interpreter. The immaterial pianissimos were fantastic. But he stayed on the level of sound. I admired Erdmann much more as a musician."

"I was impressed mostly by Gieseking [Horowitz said in 1987]. He had a finished style, played with elegance, and had a fine musical mind."

"is an enchanted thing like the glaze on a katydid-wing subdivided by sun till the nettings are legion. Like Gieseking playing Scarlatti;like the apteryx-awl as a beak, or the kiwi's rain-shawl of haired feathers, the mind feeling its way as though blind, walks with its eyes on the ground.It has memory's ear that can hear without having to hear. Like the gyroscope's fall, truly unequivocal because trued by regnant certainty,it is a power of strong enchantment. It is like the dove- neck animated by sun; it is memory's eye; it's conscientious inconsistency.It tears off the veil; tears the temptation, the mist the heart wears, from its eyes -- if the heart has a face; it takes apart dejection. It's fire in the dove-neck'siridescence; in the inconsistencies of Scarlatti. Unconfusion submits its confusion to proof; it's not a Herod's oath that cannot change."

"Gieseking played all of the German composers and went as far afield as the Rachmaninoff concertos. He was one of the few international favorites who interested himself in contemporary music, [...] But his greatest fame came as an interpreter of Debussy and Ravel. In his prime (about 1920 to 1939; after the war he sounded almost like a different pianist) there was no subtler colorist. His knowledge of pedal technique was supreme, and in particular he was a master of half-pedal effects. Never did he create an ugly sound. The sheer limpidity and transparency of his playing would alone have been memorable even if it had not been backed up by a fine musical mind."

"Walter Gieseking was a victim -- artistically, at least -- of World War II. When the Germans started the war, Gieseking (1895-1956) was among the greatest pianists alive. When Germany was defeated six years later, Gieseking, though only 50 years old, was a shadow of his former self. Although he was later cleared by an Allied court, Gieseking -- whose world fame would have made him welcome anywhere -- willingly collaborated in the cultural endeavors of the Third Reich.What remained of him pianistically, however, made it seem as if he had been punished by a higher court. Although his reputation as a great pianist remained until his death in 1956, Gieseking's numerous postwar recordings -- many of which continue to be available on the EMI label -- have always called that reputation in doubt. Even though some of those recordings, particularly those of the music of Debussy and Ravel, are distinguished enough, none justifies Gieseking's huge reputation.One is grateful, therefore, that this year's Gieseking centennial has brought forth several of the pianist's prewar recordings, most recently the first two volumes (a third is expected in the next few months) of the pianist's concerto legacy (APR) and another disc that collects four of the Beethoven piano sonatas Gieseking recorded between 1931-39.These performances show us a pianist who was not merely a great virtuoso, but the man who liberated the pedal. Like the two pianists most influenced by his example -- Sviatoslav Richter and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli -- Gieseking's imaginative use of the pedal, combined with his sophisticated ear, permitted him to cultivate a tonal palette without antecedent in its range and subtlety of color and dynamics. And while Gieseking may not have been a profoundly emotional interpreter, he had a profoundly musical mind that rarely failed to bring music to life."

"Music is motion from nonrest to rest."

"I find him interesting, especially when played by Yvonne Loriod. The works of his I've heard often start magnificantly, but their initial promise is never realized, and you get these sugar-water climaxes that I can't stand. Splendid ideas, then suddenly Gershwin, cloying sweetness! Having said that, I like Gershwin a lot. He's excellent in his own field, and less sentimental than Messiaen."

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."

"It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience. The music of Gounod has been criticized for its over-inclination towards human tenderness. But his nature predisposed him to feel this way: religious emotion took this form inside him. Is it not necessary to accept the artist’s nature? As to my Requiem, perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different."

"Now, there are some periods of music, some pitches of which I can hear nothing... of my music as well as of others. I feel that there is on my shoulders nothing more than a terrible cloak of misery and discouragement."

"It was not just in the Andante of the Second Quartet that I remembered having translated (almost involuntarily) the distant memory of bells which in the evening at Montgauzy — and this is some time ago — came to us from a village called Cadillac when the wind blew from the west. From this dull sound a vague dreaminess arose, which, like all vague dreams, is literally untranslatable. Only, does it not happen often that some exterior fact numbs us so that our thoughts become so imprecise that in reality they are not thoughts, and yet are nevertheless something in which we can take pleasure? The desire for things which do not exist perhaps, and this is indeed where music holds sway."

"Gabriel Fauré, repeating a thought he had often expressed to me, wrote in a letter on the 2nd August 1910: "In piano music one cannot use padding; one must pay in cash so that it is interesting all the time. It is perhaps the most difficult genre if you want to be as satisfying as possible," and he added modestly, "and I do my best." Then, as if in reply to some unjust reproach, "Only it cannot be done any faster.""

"But Lortat, I'm not in the habit of attracting crowds."

"As to the piece I have started, it will only be the fiftieth or more of my piano pieces that, with rare exceptions, pianists allow to pile up without playing, That has been their lot for twenty years.""

"As for my work, I can say that it reaches its end. [...] I do not want my Quartet to be published and played before it has been tried out in front of my friends, who have always been the first to hear my works: Dukas, Poujaud, Lalo, de Lallemand. I trust their judgment and it is to them that I leave the decision of whether this Quartet should be published or destroyed."

"When I am no more, you will hear said of my work: "After all, it is only so much..." You will detach yourself from it, perhaps ... All that has no importance. I have done what I could ... and so, judge, my God."

"To know an art really well, one must know everything about it, both its origins and its development."

"How many times have I asked myself what use music is? And what am I translating? What feelings? What ideas? How can I express something I do not understand myself?"

"He denied the presence of inspiration: "Without work, which is art, there is nothing," he said. "Say only that which is of value, or stay silent" was the credo of his entire existence."

"And I always enjoy seeing sunlight play on the rocks, the water, the trees and plains. What variety of effects, what brilliance and what softness... I wish my music could show as much diversity."

"Imagining is trying to formulate all one would wish to be better, all that surpasses reality."

"For me art and music especially consists of raising ourselves as high as possible above that which is."

"Music by Fauré is not very familiar to American audiences. He is best known here by his songs and by the incidental music which he wrote for Maeterlinck's "Pelléas et Mélisande"—music, by the way, which is far from showing him at his best. This quintet is in another case. [...] Fauré is reckoned, somewhat mistakenly, among those younger French music-makers who are conveniently summed up as "advanced." Actually, he is in his music infinitely less radical, less adventurous, in his methods of musical expression than are those younger men with whom he has been indiscriminately grouped. Yet in this new quintet there is much that is genuinely, and in the best sense, "modern" In its method of utterance: there are harmonic effects that are delicious in their subtlety and their iridescent hue; there are melodic ideas which captivate the imagination by their freedom and their delicacy of contour. More noteworthy, however, than the surface quality of this music that is unfailingly serene and noble, and that has moments of deep and exquisite beauty. In the second movement, particularly, there are pages where one is reminded that there is such a thing as "inspiration" even—shall one extravagantly say?—in contemporary music."

"Here is another composer of whom France has a right to be proud. Gabriel Fauré (1845), of whom it has been said that he is the French Schumann. His talent is above all manifested in what might be called intimate music, symphonic in spirit, in his songs. It is entirely unlike stage music, and a frame seems to envelop one who experiences from the music the charm of a journey taken in a dream. He chose his special direction from instinct. Listen to his disturbed songs, the first movement, so vehement, of his sonata for piano and violin, the Andante of the first quartet, for piano and strings, which has a most poignant melancholy; the vigorous first movement and the poetic Andante of the tenth [sic] quartet, many parts of his Symphony in D, certain pages of his music for the dramas of "Caligula" of Alexander Dumas, pere, and of the "Merchant of Venice" of Shakespeare; the beautiful Elegy for piano and 'cello, the gracious and feline Berceuse for piano and violin, and, above all, the admirable Requiem, which might be admired even in connection with that of Johannes Brahms, and you will arrive at the conclusion that Gabriel Fauré merits special mention among the French musicians who have cultivated mainly symphony, and that his note is absolutely personal."

"Fauré sets to French musicians a matchless example of sincerity and genuineness. Neither following fashion nor listening to would-be advisers, he proceeded untrammelled in his quest for beauty. He remained simple, combining impassioned imagination and lucidity of mind. When one listens to his music one always feels secure that an apex is reached, that here is perfection. In the beautiful proportions of his music, a great lesson is embodied—a lesson that has never been more needful than now, when the younger French school is so deeply thrilled by the innovations of Schönberg, Stravinsky, and Bartók. The main features of French art at its best are continuity and perspicuity."

"The harmony called modern, considered as a means of technique, does not suffice to constitute a modern music. Such compositions, where are to be found gathered together all the new devices, often give only a negative impression. On the other hand, some works based on harmonies relatively simple can invoke an intensely modern atmosphere. There are to be found many examples in the music of M. Gabriel Fauré, who, by the peculiar and charming turn he gives to some harmonic combinations, which are relatively little complicated, is one of the most modern composers of our epoch. The precursor of the movement of today, with which he still remains associated by his productions, his position in the history of French music will be important. [...] It is thus, as we have said in the preface, that M. Gabriel fauré occupies an exceptional place by the turn, full of elegance and of modernism, which he knows how to give to successions of relatively simple chords."

"In spite of the torment caused by his hearing, his head was full of music and his inspiration seemed unaffected by his worries. He was the creator of a world of sound whose elements he drew from within his own being, and his work, affected by the inroads of age, became more spiritual. His greatest regret was that he did not have enough time to compose, he met with obstacle after obstacle, his every composition was the product of lengthy deliberation, which required an immense effort from him ("It is like a sticking door that I have to open," he told us), and yet this was the man who left us a body of work whose importance and quality make it one of the summits of human thought."

"When in 1882, Fauré met Lizst again in Zürich, he submitted to him the manuscript of the Ballade which he had just written. "I was rather afraid that it might be too long, " Fauré told me, "and I said this to Liszt, who gave me the marvelous reply: 'Too long, young man, has no meaning. One writes as one thinks.'" The composer of Mazeppa was certainly not the man to be surprised by lengthy developments."

"I launched into Beethoven's Thirty-two Variations in C Minor, followed by Liszt's Polonaise in E. These were received with great enthusiasm. Since I was satisfied with my performance, I was about to grant the audience some degree of understanding when my host approached, smiling. After showering me with elaborate compliments, he conveyed a message from a young officer present who asked "would I be so kind as to play now one of the piano pieces of Gabriel Fauré". I was aghast, I knew Gabriel Fauré by name, just as I had heard of some of his works, but I had never played a note of them. To my great embarrassment, I had to admit my ignorance. Afterwords I learned that this "herald" of Fauré refused to be presented to me and kept repeating querulously: "I don't understand your enthusiasm for this girl. She plays the piano very well, but she's no musician if she can't play any Fauré." The future was to change his opinion and give me my revenge. Three years later I started playing Faure; and I married that young man."

"When I arrived at Aix, I was delighted to see a poster announcing a concert of music by Fauré, to be performed under the direction of the composer. When we met he asked about my work and suggested that I play him the Schumann Concerto and his own Sixth Barcarolle which had been with me all the while. There was so much I could learn from such a teacher! Unlike Chopin and Debussy, who played their own music as no other mortal could hope to, Fauré was not a virtuoso, nor even a player of any great skill, but to hear him play taught me much of value."

"In 1903 virtually all of Fauré's piano works had been written, with the exception of some Nocturnes and Barcarolles, the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra — but they remained unheard. I plunged into them, the only difficulty, among so many masterpieces, being what to choose. I spent the rest of the summer with my sister, and, keeping to my rendez-vous, I went to Mareval to play the Franck Quintet with a group of amatuers formed by Comte de V ... That fanatical Fauré enthusiast, Joseph de Marliave, decided to be presented to me this time, and even turned the pages for me. There was a young lady there in search of a husband and already she had her eye on him. When the Quintet was finished, he asked her, without any ill intent, what she thought of the music. "It's nice," she replied, in a very knowing manner, and was disqualified at once. Some time later the young officer asked me to share his life. A long engagement followed, interspersed with many happy holidays when we played music together. A very pleasant path was opening in front of us — but for how long, alas? At the side of this enlightened admirer of this music "of fantasy and reason," as he described Fauré's work, I went forward with increased confidence in the mission which I had entrusted to myself."

"In 1905 Fauré was appointed to the post of Director of the Conservatoire National de Paris. His influence breathed a new, transforming spirit into the old institution, and his reforms were so radical that they earned him the nickname of Robespierre. "Monsieur," Théodore Dubois told him on leaving office, "do not forget that, as its name implies, the Conservatoire is intended to conserve tradition." But for Fauré, tradition had quite a different meaning. It was rooted in his knowledge of those great masters on which he himself had been reared, and not in the arbitrary study of a restrictive technique."

"In 1954 the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire asked me to play the Ballade under André Cluytens to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Fauré's death. The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was packed, I was recalled again and again, and the audience was shouting enthusiastically for the Ballade to be encored. Knowing that I was not well, André Cluytens said to me: "Don't tire yourself out." "What? Forty-seven years ago, in this very society, I was told that the Ballade was obscure, today they're shouting for an encore and you think I'm not going to play it again?" And it went down even better the second time round."

"Albéniz was indeed a man of great feeling. He worshipped Gabriel Fauré, and I can say, in all fairness, that he died with his music in his heart. [...] I shall always remember our last visit to him. It was a Sunday, and that afternoon I had been playing at the Concerts Colonne. Albéniz was leaving the next day for Cambo, where he was to die shortly afterwards. Gabriel Fauré and Paul Dukas were at his side. So as not to lose a moment of the precious time left to us to spend with our friend, I was still wearing my concert dress, whose whiteness contrasted sharply with the infinite sadness pervading the room. Albéniz, who was thin as a skeleton, was lifted up, huddled in an enormous, rough dressing gown. He said to me: "Marguerite, play me Fauré's Second Valse-Caprice. Dukas is very fond of it, too." You can guess with how much feeling I sat down to the piano. The atmosphere was oppressive. In the middle of the piece, Albéniz, who was sitting beside me, flung himself on my shoulder and sobbed: "It's all over for me. I won't hear this divine music played any more.""

"Gabriel Fauré had two maxims he was fond of and used to repeat "six times an hour": "Nuance is the thing," he would say, "not a change of movement." Or again: "The bass line is with us," and it is to Fauré that I have to thank my love of the bass line in music [sic]. How right he was. I have spent my life demonstrating the truth of this. The entire construction is built on the bass line and without it music collapses. Any musician worthy of the name has this respect for the bass line. It is the root of harmony, the fundamental support of the chord. It must always be laid down, without heaviness, of course, but with sufficient strength to balance the phrase it supports. It is the rallying point which assures stability of the formation of successive modulations. At one of the big concerts given at the Institut, Charles-Marie Widor, who was then Permanent Secretary, asked me to play some of Fauré's music. While I was playing, Widor had his eyes closed and I even thought that he was asleep. As the last note died away, he sat up and said: "Oh, what a lovely bass line." Some months later the great organist underwent an operation for cataracts. I wrote to him offering my wishes for a speedy recovery and as a postscript to his answer he added: "And that lovely bass line — I think of it yet.""

"The unintelligibility of any interpretation always derives from being played "with the same colour." It is shading that gives variety. There is a great deal to be said on this subject, one of the most delicate questions posed by playing. Of course, one must respect the requirements indicated by the composer. Nevertheless, it often happened, with Fauré beside me, that I had to differ from what was written. This would be quite impossible with Claude Debussy or Maurice Ravel, who were orchestrators, a thing Gabriel Fauré was not. We knew that he was always assisted by his pupils for his orchestration of Pénélope. Fauré's phrasing was very long, his perorations endless (Debussy said: "He doesn't know how to finish"), and these required support from variety in shading. I tried to make his phrasing more striking, to enhance the value of a dynamic, to find inflections which were not accentuated, but which gave the right kind of sound to a modulation. After I had considered the effect for a long time beforehand, I would submit my proposals to the master for his approval."

"He liked crescendo and diminuendo to be short and effective just like Toscanini, who obtained in this way the most striking effects of his staggering dynamism. Fauré had adopted the rule for shading that Hans von Bülow had laid down: when one reads "crescendo," it means leaving a more "piano" tone for a reinforcement of the sound; and when one reads "diminuendo," it indicates that one is playing as loudly as one can to allow the tone to be so softened."

"Nevertheless, the paradoxes in Fauré sometimes bewildered me. Despite his very great respect for tradition, he was much less intransigent when it came to his own compositions. He could even be disconcerting. During a rehearsal of one of his works, the conductor was not sure about a point in the score, so he asked Fauré, who replied apathetically: "Well, I don't really know." One day, arriving at my house unexpectedly, he found me at the piano, playing his Theme and Variations, which had just been given as a companion-piece at the Conservatoire, of which he was the Director. I said to him: "Will you let the ascending passage in the second-last variation be played in octaves?" "Oh, no," he said, "not in octaves. I forbid it. I detest that." Nonetheless, on the day of the competition he allowed it. Why? Because at heart he did not care. For him his work was like a bottle at sea. He had other points in common with Alfred de Vigny: a patrician turn of mind and the same indifference to the work once it had been completed."

"Composed between 1893 and 1896, Dolly owes its title to the Christian name of the daughter of my friend Madame Bardac. This was the happy lot of this delightful woman for whom in 1892 Fauré had written La Bonne Chanson and who ten years later would be the noble companion of Claude Debussy. Dolly, who now is Madame de Tinan, was then a little blonde girl of charming behaviour and feminine precocity. The music which Fauré wrote for her is quite in her image. It is the only time that the composer used titles other than those of a musical genre. The album consists of six pieces: in the Berceuse one can perceive the musician's feelings in front of such childlike grace. Miau is not, as Emile Vuillermoz wrote, the name of the household cat that used to jump about mischievously, but the nickname that young Dolly gave to her brother Raoul Bardac, who was later himself a pupil of Fauré and Debussy. Le Jardin de Dolly is the garden in an enchanted dream, full of perfumed flowers, while Kitty-Valse illustrates the whirling leaps of a favourite dog. Tendresse makes clear its meaning in its delicate figurations. Finally, the Pas Espagnol is the transposition in music of the bronze equestrian statue of Frémiet, Fauré's father-in-law, which stood on a mantlepiece in Madame Bardac's house and which was much admired by young Dolly."

"The sounds of the divine Requiem ring out in my memory. They accompanied Gabriel Fauré on the day of the final farewells at the Madeleine in November 1924. I cannot hear them without our past surging up. It has been said of the Requiem that it is not "Christian" because it lessens the horror of the Dies Irae and lights up with eternal hope in its In Paradisum. Fauré's genius was in full flight when he composed his Requiem in 1887. He was much distressed by the recent death of his father, and, overwhelmed by his first confrontation between life and death, Fauré still did not any sense of revolt. The melodies of his Requiem are without violence. He did not record terror but a gentle certainty of divine mercy. "If I were God, I would have pity on the heart of man." It is the same credo that Debussy would later put in the mouth of Arkel in Pelléas et Melisande.✱"

"In March 1924 Roger Ducasse brought me the staggering message with which Gabriel Fauré had entrusted him: "I would like to die without leaving any 'scratches' and see Marguerite Long again." And he repeated once again: "No one has played my music like she has and no one has written about my music like her husband." In these last moments he wanted to erase the shadows that had tarnished our feelings. "Come and see him," Roger Ducasse insisted. "He will be waiting for you tomorrow afternoon." It was a Tuesday, I have not forgotten. When I got to his house, my heart beating, I learned that that very day, at five o'clock in the morning, Gabriel Fauré had passed away. I saw him anyway. He lay on his death bed, his features ravaged but still recognizable. This was the last time I saw him, and I cannot say what it meant to me, because Fauré's music was one of the reasons for living, because it was tied to everything that was my musical youth. I shall always remain loyal to it. For his music I have joined my belief in Fauré with an infinite gentleness, forgiveness, pardon. With it I have rejected the idea of eternal flames and unattainable Paradise. In Paradisum. It is true, as Georges Duhamel wrote in La Musique Consolatrice, that "music watches with us among the ruins and ashes of all our former happiness."

"Fauré, the direct heir of Chopin, has carried through all the methods of composition that one finds in the work of the Polish genius and in that of Liszt. He transforms them into his own style and goes further down the path opened by Chopin, since he feels all the expressive value of pure harmony. Chopin, Fauré — two of the piano's greatest lyricists."

"It has already been said that since Richard Wagner the lyric stage has not seen any work which comes as near perfection as Pénélope, nor one which so constantly reaches the heights. Nothing is truer, but however magnificent the praise it is still incomplete. What must be added is that for the first time for more than a century and a half the French scène lyrique has spoken its own language. [..] None but he, furthermore, was capable of being the hero of such a worthy mission. He is the purest musician alive today and such as we have possibly never had here. Mozart, Schubert and Chopin alone had to such an eminent degree the divine gift of producing music as spontaneously as a tree produces fruit, and no one has possessed at the same time such pure craftsmanship."

"He is assuredly the greatest musician that our country can boast of and yet showered with honours, glory, fame, Gabriel Fauré was until yesterday not the least known, but the most badly known in our country. Because he produced above all works of medium dimensions, many thought him to be nothing more than a lesser figure, a 'poeta minor' of music; because he always avoided that grandiloquence which most of Franck's pupils confused with true grandeur; because he is generally happy with moderate means in chamber music he was given the pejorative tag of 'salon musician.' As if the size mattered, or the noise of the music, or the weight of the score, as if in music the content should always be measured by the size of the shell."

"Under an ancient portrait of Glück can be read this legend: "He preferred the Muses to the Sirens." Fauré, a purer musician than the composer of the Iphigénie operas, showed in Pénélope that he could unite in harmony the voluptuous Sirens with the serious Muses of order and intelligence. So much music and so wonderful, not a useless bar, not a note more or less than is required; much substance yet little material: it was the craftsmanship of Mozart just as that of Fauré, and this simplicity which exudes dryness is so great that it can surprise us before it touches and moves us."

"Ah, it's lovely, the Ballade, it really is delightful. I am unfair to Fauré's music in so far as I don't know it very well. When we get back, you'll have to play me lots of it."

"The songs are, beyond doubt, the crown of his art. They extend throughout his lifetime and form in themselves an interesting historical study of a composer, himself somewhat reclusive, slowly and with constant ingenuity reacting to changing accents in the world outside his window. The suave, chaste elegance of the early songs (of which "Dans Les Ruines d'un abbaye" and the Schumann-esque, exalted "Après un Reve" are the best known), through a quiet struggle of conscience with Wagnerian harmony (most of all in the settings of Verlaine from the 1890s), to a bashful nod toward musical Impressionism in the very last cycle, L'Horizon chimerique of 1922. Not a song in this vast output is less than exquisite; the fashion I have sometimes encountered, of not taking this music seriously, ought to be put to rest by the evidence these two albums contain."

"He lacks the one fault which for an artist is a quality — ambition."

"How can it be that I did not know a work like that? I am bowled over by what I have heard."

"To love and understand Fauré constitutes a privilege from which it is difficult not to derive a sort of innocent pride. It is the mark of a subtle ear, the flattering indication of a refined sensibility."

"To love and understand Fauré, one must at all costs have a musical nature. Fauré is pure music in the strictest, acoustic meaning of the word. It is no good bringing anything in the way of painter's or sculptor's gifts to listen to him. One may be unmusical and still love Beethoven or Berlioz. That is what explains the imposing number of the clientele of these two composers. But the same does not apply to Fauré. If you are not sensible to the pleasure given by certain modulations, if you do not taste the disturbing flavor of certain harmonies, if you are not interested in the subtle laws of the gravitation of notes around a tonic, a dominant or leading note, you will understand nothing of this style, disconcerting in its apparent simplicity. Certain foreign amateurs of music have experienced no difficulty in becoming initiated into the style of Debussy or Ravel, but they are put off by the nonchalant fluidity of Fauré's writing, which under its apparent classicism contains the most magnificent revolutionary audacities. There is between this music and the great majority of listeners of every country a terrible lack of comprehension."

"This Poulenc recital was extremely interesting, in terms of both the choice of works and the high standard of the performers, all of whom are excellent musicians. With the exception of the sonata (or concerto) for two pianos, all the works were new to me, and so I got to know lots of new things, most of them charming and elegant, if occasionally not without a touch of sentimentality. I don't consider Poulenc a particularly great composer, but I understand the love that the French feel for him and am not far from sharing it with them."

"Anyone who acts without paying attention to what he is doing is wasting his life. I'd go so far as to say life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece."

"I do not believe that the few women who have achieved greatness in creative work are the exception, but I think that life has been hard on women. It has not given them opportunity, it has not made them convincing. A woman has not been considered a working force in the world, and the work that her sex and conditions impose upon her has not been so adjusted as to give her a little fuller scope for the development of her best self. She has been handicapped and only the few through force of circumstances or inherent strength have been able to get the better of that handicap. There is no sex and art. Genius is an independent quality. The woman of the future with her broader outlook, her greater opportunities will go far, I believe, in creative work of every description."

"Marriage must adapt itself to one's career. With a man, it is all arranged and expected. If the woman is the artist, it upsets the standards, the conventions, the usual arrangements, and usually, it ruins the woman's art. I feel that it is difficult to reconcile the domestic life with the artistic. A woman should choose one or the other. She must have freedom, not restraint. She must receive aid, not selfish, jealous exactions and complaints. When a woman of talent marries a man who appreciates that side of her, such a marriage may be ideally happy for both."

"It is not a young girl who composes, this is a composer"

"Her music has a certain feminine daintiness and grace, but it is amazingly superficial and wanting in variety. But on the whole, this concert confirmed that the conviction held by many, that while women may someday vote, they will never learn to compose anything worthwhile."

"La douce voiz du louseignol sauvage Qu’oi nuit et jor cointoier et tentir Me radoucist mon cuer et rassouage. Lors ai talent que chant pour esbaudir."

"Chançon, va t'en pour faire mon message La u je n'os trestourner ne guenchir."

"Mult seraie bone vie De bien amer, Qui aurait bele amie Pour deporter; Sanz orgueil, sanz folie, Et sanz guiler, Ne ja n'eust envie d'autrui amer; Ne me vousist fausser; Mes, com loial amie, Celui amer Qui de fin cuer la prie."

"We all know the Django story, but the actual recorded evidence is something else altogether. The hot jazz genius was a formidable speedster, yes, but his playing was also full of life and love, a romanticism that belongs to another century. Django is revered as much for his feel, his tone, and his heart as he is his technical prowess. A master of his art whose influence is felt far and wide, Django is proof that talent will always find a way to turn a setback into an advantage."

"Et quand divinement ta voix m’enchaine Je vois s’évanouir tout ma peine Et tout ton être chante et vive en moi."