Composers From Germany

"Ich besitze von ihm eine seiner Sinfonien, die ich zur Erinnerung an eines der größten Genies, die ich gekannt habe, aufbewahre. Ich habe von ihm nur dieses einzige Werk, weiß aber, dass er noch anderes Vortreffliches geschrieben hat."

"Das ist Musik von erstaunlicher Perfektion. Sie ist seiner würdig."

"Was sollen aber die buntschäckigten Balletten in den Opern? Balletten, die auf die Oper nicht die geringste Beziehungen haben. Verderben sie nicht alle mögliche Wirkung, die sie in ihrem Gange gewaltsam unterbrechen? (32)"

"Gestern war Concert Spirituel. Die Symphonie von Haydn war allerliebst und die Exekution vorzüglich gut. Mlle Wendling und ein welscher Tenorist Giuliano wurden ausgepfiffen. Danner und ein andrer welscher Geiger Giuliani wurden allgemein beklatscht. Eine Symphonie concertante von den Gebrüdern und Söhnen Thonberg [Romberg] fand Beifall. Das Konzert auf dem Fagotte von Devienne so so."

"Soll die Musik in den Kirchen nicht am meisten fürs Herz seyn? Taugen darzu Fugen? (96)"

"Welche Tiefe der Gedanken - welch klassisches Talent!"

"Der Mann hat einen grossen Stil!"

"Sir Thomas Beecham was asked if he had ever conducted any Stockhausen. He said, "No, but I once trod in some.""

"[The attacks of September 11 were] the greatest work of art in the cosmos … compared to that, we composers are nothing."

"I had always written in a circular way and through Stockhausen I could see that I didn't want to ever play again from eight bars to eight bars, because I never end songs: they just keep going on. Through Stockhausen I understood music as a process of elimination and addition."

"For my generation, Stockhausen's published lectures had unbelievable impact. He was the most hopeful of figures: the 21st century was going to be great. The classical teachers in my school, meanwhile, kept moaning about the good old days of music and changing the masses of music pupils into slave performers, putting to sleep any creative thought or the will to make new things."

"And when they encounter works of art which show that using new media can lead to new experiences and to new consciousness, and expand our senses, our perception, our intelligence, our sensibility, then they will become interested in this music."

"New methods change the experience, and new experiences change man. Whenever we hear sounds, we are changed, we are no longer the same, and this is more the case when we hear organized sounds; music."

"What, in fine, did Frederick bequeath to Prussia? Well, he bequeathed his name and fame as a great conqueror. He became in a secular sense the Patron Saint of Germany."

"The development of foreign ministries further restricted the scope for summitry. But rulers often retained their own private diplomatic networks. Louis XV was a prime example, while Frederick the Great of Prussia created his own Kabinett, or private office, and took over the most important business from the Foreign Office. Not surprisingly, Frederick also tried his hand at summitry: seeking a rapprochement with Austria after the Seven Years War, he met the emperor Joseph II at Neisse in 1769 and Neustadt in 1770."

"We have just sung a Prussian national hymn which celebrates Frederick the Great. What renders that sovereign so present to our memory is not our monarchical faith, but he is for us the personification of the ancient Prussian spirit."

"The character of the founder of the greatness of Prussia...can have no attraction for those who require as an indispensable condition of fealty that their hero shall have either purity, or sensibility, or generosity, or high honour, or manly respect for human nature. ... Frederick's sensibility was of the literary and aesthetic kind, rather than the humane and social. ... There has never been any epoch whose foremost men had such faith and hope in the virtues of humanity. There has never been any prominent man who despised humanity so bitterly and unaffectedly as Frederick despised it. We know what to think of a man...who never found so much pleasure in a friendly act as when he could make it the means of hurting the recipient; whose practical pleasantries were always spiteful and sneering and cruel."

"The essential character of modern German nationalism was chiefly moulded by the tradition and structure of the Prussian military State. The latter itself changed in the process from a dynastic-aristocratic to a national form. Frederick the Great was elevated to a national divinity in a manner unknown to any other nation. His example became the supreme national dogma."

"He is king among the heroes. His mind rises above the earth, he turns upon his own axis like the sun, shines in his own light, shares her heat and her spots. His are the dimensions of a great spirit, and centuries to come will study his stature and nature with the utmost care. ... He demands the space of a colossus. ... I can think of no being more exalted than the King."

"Frederick the Great is for us the embodiment of that ancient Prussian spirit on which is based the categorical imperative of duty. The King ... in whom the idea of the State overshadowed all else ... is a figure more suited than any other to a nation that is labouring under heavy burdens."

"If I had a province to punish, I would let it be governed by philosophers. Attributed in The Orthodox churchman's magazine; or, A Treasury of divine and useful knowledge (1803)."

"Christianity… is an old metaphysical fiction, stuffed with fables, contradictions and absurdities: it was spawned in the fevered imagination of the Orientals, and then spread to our Europe, where some fanatics espoused it, where some intriguers pretended to be convinced by it and where some imbeciles actually believed it. Attributed in "The West and the Rest", by Niall Ferguson, Penguin 2011 (Kindle edition)."

"Audacity, audacity, always audacity!"

"I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right."

"Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments."

"They were stronger than Turk and Saracen, but not than Hunger and Disease. Leaders did not know then, as our little Friend at Berlin came to know, that “an Army, like a serpent, goes upon its belly.""

"Frederick is what the English call an ‘acquired taste’: repulsive on first contact, yet as one gets involved with him one becomes addicted to him and finds him arousing a sentiment that cannot be called love but that may possibly be stronger than love."

"Frederick the Great once asked his personal physician, Dr. Zimmermann, "Can you name me a single proof of the existence of God?" Zimmermann replied, "Your Majesty, the Jews!" By that he meant that if one wanted to ask for a proof of God, for something visible and tangible, that no one could contest, which is unfolded before the eyes of all men, then we should have to turn to the Jews. Quite simply, there they are to the present day. Hundreds of little nations in the Near East... have dissolved and disappeared in the huge sea of nations; [only] this one tiny nation has maintained itself.... If the question of a proof of God is raised, one need merely point to this simple historical fact. For in the person of the Jew there stands before our eyes the witness of God's covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and in that way with us all. Even one who does not understand Holy Scripture can see this reminder."

"Like a long boat which follows in the wake of the warship to which it is tied."

"It does not pay a man to exist until the age of Methuselah by making his days indolent and useless. The more this is reflected upon, the more the reflector will desire to undertake meaningful and useful actions, the more they will have lived."

"If my soldiers began to think, not one would remain in the ranks."

"(About Cesare Borgia) What cruelties were not the result of his? Who could count all his crimes? Such was the man that Machiavel prefers to all the great geniuses of his time, and to the heroes of antiquity, and of which he finds the life and action make a good example for those that fortune favors."

"We humans are foolish in many ways: we want to conquer all as if we had all time, as if our lives did not have any end. Thus, our real time passes too quickly, and often when one believes that they are working only for themselves, they are in fact working for unworthy or ungrateful successors."

"The cruel man is of misanthropic temperament, and is a man of moods, oscillating from quiet brooding to sudden explosions. If a man like this does not fight this unhappy provision of his soul during his youth, under no circumstances could he avoid becoming furious - and foolish. There are those who would leave it up to God, but to ensure justice on the earth, and not fob it off to the Divinity, it is mandatory that people know both virtue and its benefits, since the virtues lead to unity among them, not the war of all against all. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to conserve them, and show that crime can only return misfortunes and destruction, including of the criminal himself. Who is the last victim of his crimes."

"My people and I," he said, "have come to an agreement which satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please."

"It is thus the justice (one would have to say) which must be the main responsibility of a sovereign. Since it is the prime interest of the many people whom they control, they must give it priority over any other interest of their own. What then becomes of Machiavel's recommendations of naked self-interest, self-aggrandizement, unleashed ambition and despotism? The sovereign, far from being the absolute Master of the people which are under his domination, is only the first servant."

"Je voulus faire un jet d’eau dans mon jardin; Euler calcula l’effort des roues pour faire monter l’eau dans un bassin, d’où elle devait retomber par des canaux, afin de jaillir à Sans-Souci. Mon moulin a été exécuté géométriquement, et il n’a pu élever une goutte d’eau à cinquante pas du bassin. Vanité des vanités! vanité de la géométrie!"

"As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to maintain the existence of Nothing."

"(About the battle of Kunersdorf) "I shall not survive this cruel misfortune. The consequences will be worse than defeat itself. I have no resources left, and, to speak quite frankly I believe everything is lost. I shall not outlive the downfall of my country. Farewell, forever!""

"It is a fact that princes who try to raise other princes with violence, end up destroying themselves."

"Of all Prussia's neighbours the Russian Empire is the most dangerous, both from its power and its geographical position, and those who rule Prussia after me should cultivate the friendship of those barbarians, because they are able to ruin Prussia altogether through the immense number of their mounted troops, whilst one cannot repay them for the damage which they may do because of the poverty of that part of Russia which is nearest to Prussia, and through which one has to pass in order to get into the Ukraine."

"Do you think I take any pleasure in this dog's life, in seeing and causing death in people unknown to me, in losing friends and acquaintances daily, in seeing my reputation ceaselessly exposed to the caprices of fortune, in spending the whole year with uneasiness and apprehension, in continually risking my life and my fortune? I certainly know the value of tranquility, the charms of society, the pleasures of life, and I like to be happy as much as anybody. Although I desire all these good things, I will not buy them with baseness and infamy. Philosophy teaches us to do our duty, to serve our country faithfully at the expense of our blood and of our repose, to commit our whole being to it."

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"Machiavel's The Prince is to ethics what the work of Spinoza is to faith. Spinoza sapped the fundamentals of faith, and drained the spirit of religion; Machiavel corrupted policy, and undertook to destroy the precepts of healthy morals: the errors of the first were only errors of speculation, but those of the other had a practical thrust. [...] I always have regarded The Prince as one of the most dangerous works which were spread in the world; it is a book which falls naturally into the hands of princes, and of those who have a taste for policy. [...] There is a real injustice in concluding that the rotten apples are representative of all of them."

"But France's powerful armies, and a very large number of fortresses, ensure that the French Sovereign will possess the throne forever, and they do not have anything to fear now concerning internal wars or their neighbors invading France."

"Compare Holland with Russia; you see only marshy and sterile islands in the former, which rise from the center of the ocean: a small republic which is only 48 miles length by 40 wide. But this small body is the very nerve-center of the region: immense people live in it, and these industrious people are both powerful and rich. They shook the yoke of the Spanish domination, which was then the most formidable monarchy of Europe. The trade of this republic extends to the ends of the world; and new trade appears almost immediately; it can maintain in times of war an army fifty thousand men, without counting a many and well maintained fleet."

"If the men were without passions, it would be forgivable to see Machiavel try to give some to them; he would be the new Prometheus bringing celestial fire to breathe life into robots. But no man is without passions. When they are moderated, they are the heart of the enterprise; but when the brake is stripped of them, they are its destruction."

"Hero demolished both his friends and his soldiers, who had helped him in the execution of his plans; he found new friends, and raised other troops. I say, in spite of Machiavel and of the ingrates, that this policy of Hero is very bad, and that it is much more prudent to trust the troops which have tested and known value, and have friends whose loyalty has also been tested. The new and unknown ones are also unsafe. I leave the reader to push this reasoning further; all those who detest ingratitude, and who truly value friendship, will not remain neutral on this matter."

"Just as people are born, live a time, and die by diseases or old age, in the same way republics are formed, flower a few centuries, and perish finally by the audacity of a citizen, or by the weapons of their enemies. All has their period; all empires, and largest monarchies even, have only so much time: the republics feel continually that this time will arrive, and they look at any too-powerful family as the carriers of a disease which will give them the blow of death."

"Neither antiquity nor any other nation has imagined a more atrocious and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating God. — This is how Christians treat the autocrat of the universe."