conductors-from-france

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Damned professional"

"Now that was very impressive. But before you try to impress the ladies in the balcony, make sure the horns come in."

"Young conductors talk too much."

"Don’t overconduct; don’t make unnecessary movements or gestures"

"Don’t conduct solo instruments in solo passages; don’t worry or annoy sections or players by looking intently at them in ‘ticklish’ passages"

"Don’t come before the orchestra is you have not mastered the score; don’t practise or learn the score ‘on the orchestra’"

"Don’t be disrespectful to your players (no swearing)"

"I have always felt rather badly for orchestra musicians, especially the stringed instrument player who certainly in his youth expected to be a virtuoso… I admire their patience and ability, and through the years have made the effort to show them my respect and – love in many instances."

"How I regret not having told César Franck of my profound admiration for him and his music. After playing he Sonata for violin for the first time, I nearly wept over certain phrases. The beauty of it overwhelmed me."

"I never conduct any of the ballets I conducted for the Ballets Russes, without my mind's eye being completely aware of the dancers."

"I always dreamed in my youth of a great, consuming love. I was often disappointed and returned each time to my music for consolation. It never failed me."

"In earlier days I used to like introducing new music in concerts but now I feel that I have done my duty to young composers… so I return to my first love Romantic music – and especially to Brahms who has always been my favourite."

"Told, during the days of segregation in the US, that he couldn't be served as he was trying to take breakfast at a restaurant "for colored folk", he insisted: "But we are colored, my dear. We are pink.""

"Madame, everyone is Someone."

"On finishing early at a rehearsal the London Symphony Orchestra leader Hugh Maguire said to Monteux: "Oh Maitre it is so nice to finish early. My wife will be so surprised." Monteux replied: "Be careful. You might be surprised!""

"Cette grande gloire de la France (Great glory of France)"

"I regret they don't have symphony orchestras all over the world so I could see Burma and Samarkand."

"Debussy was behind me when we played L'après-midi d'un faune because he did not want anything in his score to be changed on account of the dancing. And when we came to a forte, he said 'Monteux, that is a forte, play forte'. He did not want anything shimmering. And he wanted everything exactly in time."

"I decided then and there that the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms were the only music for me, not the music of this crazy Russian. … My one desire was to flee that room and find a quiet corner in which to rest my aching head. Then Diaghilev turned to me and with a smile said, "This is a masterpiece, Monteux, which will completely revolutionize music and make you famous, because you are going to conduct it." And, of course, I did."

"'E does not know 'is métier."

"Stravinsky, 'e can do what 'e like, but I have to do what ze composer 'as written."

"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."

"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."

"Creation exists only in the unforeseen made necessary."

"Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

"[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."