"He conducts with his whole body - arms, head and behind together. At moments he seems to dance on his knees; he crouches down; he makes tense and pulsating movements, like electric vibrations, with his hands. He gives explanations in very bad French, and sings out of tune passages that he wants played again; he cares nothing for ridicule; he always looks bored, sulky half asleep - but nevertheless lets nothing escape him."

"I simply must tell you of the thrilling impression the work (Salome) made on me when I read through it recently. Every note is spot on! Your vocation is to be dramatist. Through your music you have made me understand for the first time what Wilde's work is about"

"I labour on with countless rehearsals. He makes do with just a few, and it always sounds right."

"You are really the only one of all my colleagues who takes any notice of my works."

"His music stirs me to my very depths. To me the finale is a flood of strength and joy. One always wonders how that could have come out of this. There has been nothing like it in symphonic music since Beethoven."

"Richard Strauss is a brilliant pig - I can find no other word for it. The whole thing is larded with illogical, unnecessary and hideous discord."

"Richard Strauss? An old Oyster!"

"No other composer equals Strauss in his power of writing long stretches of music that interests us in and for itself, at the same time that every line and colour in it seems to express some new trait of the individual who is being sketched."

"I would like to admit all Strauss operas to whichever purgatory punishes triumphant banality. Their musical substance is cheap and poor; it cannot interest a musician today."

"I believe that he (Strauss) will remain one of the characteristic and outstanding figures in musical history. Works like Salome, Elektra and Intermezzo, and others will not perish."

"I watched him at rehearsals and admired the way he conducted. Every corrective remark he made was exact: his ears and his musicianship were impregnable."

"Salome again made an extraordinary impression on me. It is entirely a work of genius, very powerful and decidedly one of the most important things that our age has produced."

"When all is said and done, he was a giant - even if his feet were made of clay."

"Work, as he practised it, was quite a remarkable procedure with Strauss. Nothing of the daemonic, nothing of the artist’s mad exaltation, nothing of those depressions and desperations we know from accounts of Beethoven and Wagner. Strauss works to the point and composes like Johann Sebastian Bach, like all those sublime craftsmen of their art, quietly and systematically. At nine in the morning he sits down to resume his work just where he left off the day before, always writing the first sketch of his composition in pencil, the piano score in ink, and continues thus without pause until twelve or one o’clock. In the afternoon he plays Skat, a German card game, transfers two or three pages to the final score and possibly conducts an opera in the evening. He does not know what nervousness is, by day and night his artistic mind is equally alert and lucid. When his valet knocks on the door to bring his evening clothes, he gets up from his work, dresses, rides to the theatre and conducts with the same assurance and calm with which he plays Skat in the afternoon, and the next morning inspiration again falls into its proper place."

"It is difficult composing endings. Beethoven and Wagner could do it. Only great composers can do it. I can do it too."

"Long live the politico-satrical-parodistic opera!"

"Strauss told me about his new ballet, which he wrote in the summer. It’s called ‘Schlagobers’ (whipped cream) and he said, jokingly: ‘Oh yes, when one gets old one has ideas like that.’"

"Declarations about war and politics are not fitting for an artist, who must give his attention to his creations and his works."

"More like a sacrilege du printemps."

"Man (in B major) asks: When? When? Nature, (in C Major) answers from the depths Never, never, never will the weather improve"."

"Please start from the Bruch violin concerto again!"

"I hope, most revered Maestro, that these metronome markings, in my opinion wholly unneeded by you, are specific enough. Where they do not fit with your conception, I implore you urgently just to ignore them."

"Thirty years ago I was regarded as a rebel, but to-day, as you see, I have lived to find myself a classic."

"It is clear to me that the German nation will achieve new creative energy only by liberating itself from Christianity"

"I am not one to compose long melodies as did Mozart. I can’t get beyond short themes. But what I can do, is utilize such a theme, paraphrase it and extract everything that is in it, and I don’t think there’s anybody today who can match me in that."

"Anybody who wants to be a real musician must be able to set a menu to music."

"Why don't people see what is new in my work, how in them, as is found only in Beethoven, the human being visibly plays a part in the work."

"Very fine, but why do you put so many wrong notes in? Basically, it is all built on simple triads."

"I ask myself why I have actually survived once more and been called back to life."

"As for the Rosenkavalier waltzes...how could I have done those without a thought of the laughing genius of Vienna?"

"In my opinion, Gustav Mahler's work is one of the most important and interesting products in the history of modern creative arts."

"Of all god-gifted dispensers of joy, Johann Strauss is to me the most endearing. I willingly admit to having sometimes conducted the Perpetuum Mobile with far more pleasure than many a four movement symphony."

"Mozart's melodies, Beethoven's symphonies, Schubert's songs, acts two and three of Tristan are symbols in which are revealed the most profound spiritual truths. They are not "invented", but are "given in their dreams"to those privileged to receive them. Whence they come no one knows, not even their creator, the unconscious mouthpiece of the demiurge."

"The melodic idea which suddenly falls upon me out of the blue appears in the imagination immediately, unconsciously, uninfluenced by reason. It is the greatest gift of the divinity and cannot be compared with anything else."

"Melody as revealed in the greatest works of our classics is one of the most noble gifts which an invisible deity has bestowed on mankind."

"I know what I want, and I know what I meant when I wrote this. After all, I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer."

":9. When you think you have reached the limits of prestissimo, go twice as fast. (1948 Today, I should like to ammend this as follows: Go twice as slowly - addressed to conductors of Mozart)."

":10. If you follow these rules carefully you will, with your fine gifts and great accomplishments, always be the darling of your listeners."

":8. Always accompany a singer in such a way that he can sing without effort."

"My wife, my child, my music, Nature and the sun; they are my happiness."

":6. If you think that the brass is not blowing hard enough, tone it down another shade or two."

"I was never revolutionary. The only revolutionary in our time was Strauss!"

":7. It is not enough that you yourself can hear every word the soloist sings - you know it off by heart anyway: the audience must be able to follow without effort. If they do not understand the words they will go to sleep."

":5. But never let the horns and woodwind out of your sight: if you can hear them at all they are still too strong."

"When during my stay in Egypt I became familiar with the works of Nietzsche, whose polemic against christianity was particularly to my liking, the antipathy which I had always felt against a religion which relieves the faithful of responsibility for their actions (by means of confession) was confirmed and strengthened."

"I have met a great many artists in my life but never one who knew how to maintain such abstract and unerring objectivity towards himself. Thus Strauss frankly admitted to me in the first hour of our meeting that he well knew, that at seventy the composer’s musical inspiration no longer possesses its pristine power. He could hardly succeed in composing works like Till Eulenspiegel or Death and Transfiguration because just pure music requires an extreme measure of creative freshness. But the World could still inspire him!"

"The left hand has nothing to do with conducting. Its proper place is the waistcoat pocket from which it should only emerge to restrain or make some minor gesture for which in any case a scarcely perceptible glance should suffice."

"It is better to conduct with the ear instead of with the arm: the rest follows automatically."

"Conducting is, after all, a difficult business – one has to be seventy years of age to realise this fully!"

"I am convinced that the decisive factor in dramatic effect will be a smaller orchestra, which does not drown out the human voice as does a large orchestra…The orchestra of the opera of the future is the chamber orchestra which, by painting in the background of the action on the stage with crystalline clearness, can alone realise precisely the intention of the composer with regard to the vocal parts. It is after all an important desideratum that the audience should not only hear the sounds but should also be able to follow the words closely."