Mahler Quotes

• There is a world of difference between a Mahler eighth note and a normal eighth note.

  Gustav Mahler

  Differences, World, Normal

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• Perhaps, once I am gone, the one thing I might be remembered for is having sung a great deal of Mahler with a great many phenomenal conductors. It is wonderful music, very spiritual.

  Maureen Forrester

  Spiritual, Gone, Might

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• Although, I am proud of all my Symphonies as they all have something special to say, my particular favourite is the Fifth. As the great Mahler expert Donald Mitchell said that if Mahler had written another Symphony, it would have been my Fifth!

  Malcolm Arnold

  Symphony, Special, Experts

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• You should never trust anyone who listens to Mahler before they're forty.

  Clive James

  Never Trust, Should, Composer

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• I have always adored Mahler, and Mahler was a major influence on the music of the Beatles. John and me used to sit and do the Kindertotenlieder and Wunderhorn for hours, we'd take turns singing and playing the piano. We thought Mahler was gear.

  Paul McCartney

  Piano, Singing, Gears

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• I found a deep kinship between Mahler's recurrent attempts to confront all sides of life and to affirm himself in the face of his own finitude, and Aschenbach's dedication to persevere in the literary evocation of beauty. Exploring this kinship led me to reflect on many of Mahler's songs and symphonies - and particularly his great masterpiece, Das Lied von der Erde. The end result was a way of reading Mann that I hadn't originally anticipated at all.

  Philip Kitcher

  Song, Reading, Dedication

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Britten's opera tends to see things in simpler terms. It portrays an Aschenbach who wants a richer form of sexual fulfillment, and who is hemmed in by the social conventions to which he subscribes. But Visconti's use of the Mahler Adagietto is perfect for what I take to be Aschenbach's sexual desire.

  Philip Kitcher

  Perfect, Desire, Use

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Using the Adagietto of Mahler's Fifth is one of the touches of pure genius in Visconti's film (even though Mahlerians complain very loudly that the piece has been ruined), since it corresponds perfectly to Aschenbach's yearnings and to his circling walks around Venice.

  Philip Kitcher

  Venice, Complaining, Genius

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I love Gustavo Dudamel and I love what he does for classical music, and I love what he comes out of, El Sistema and the old man Abreu. When we were in Venezuela, I had the chance to go to his building. He had, like, five or six orchestras playing of kids from the hood playing, like, Mahler's third symphony and Shostakovich fifth and Beethoven. Man, it's unbelievable. I mean, they could play.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Kids, Mean, Men

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• My favorite composers are the ones that tell the story. I love Wagner. I love Mahler. Prokofiev. The programmatic music. I listen more to classic rock because I don't like the contemporary music very much.

  Patti LuPone

  Rocks, Stories, Classic

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• A Haydn symphony had a meaning for the social group that listened to it. A Mahler symphony had a meaning for the man who composed it. Here is the difference between the classical and romantic attitudes to art.

  Anthony Burgess

  Art, Attitude, Men

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• Presenting Aschenbach as a composer - based on Mahler - leads to some dreadful scenes (especially those in which Aschenbach is berated by his student), and it surely distorts the character Mann created. Yet, we know that Mann's novella was based on a holiday in Venice he took with his wife and brother, and that while he was there he followed the reports in the German newspapers, describing the dying Mahler's progress as he returned from New York to Vienna.

  Philip Kitcher

  Brother, New York, Holiday

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• We know that he gave Aschenbach Mahler's first name, and also his facial features. So Visconti picks up on something interesting. That led me to think about ways of developing further the Aschenbach-Mahler connection.

  Philip Kitcher

  Thinking, Names, Interesting

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I didn't know that Mahler would come to play so large a role, nor that music and literature and philosophy can interinanimate one another in the way I've come to think they do in this case.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophy, Thinking, Play

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I like the way Mahler wandered about in his music and still retained his passion. He must have looked like an earthquake walking down the street.

  Charles Bukowski

  Passion, Earthquakes, Way

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• I have enjoyed most particularly reading the correspondence between Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. The genuine friendship, competitiveness and support that thread through their communications are life lessons for us all.

  Jessye Norman

  Life Lesson, Communication, Reading

  "Jessye Norman: By the Book". www.nytimes.com. June 05, 2014.

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• Schopenhauer's thought that Will is insatiable, that once satisfied in one form it must be expressed in new desires, is inherited both by Mann and by Aschenbach (it's in Mahler, as well). So life is inevitably incomplete.

  Philip Kitcher

  Desire, Life Is, Form

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• To be passionate in today's world is not politically correct... Nowadays we are supposed to cope. This was not Mahler's problem. He saw it, he heard it, and he expressed it. He was a kaleidoscopic, Olympian figure.

  Lorin Maazel

  Passionate, World, Today

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• Every spring I hear the thrush singing in the glowing woods he is only passing through. His voice is deep, then he lifts it until it seems to fall from the sky. I am thrilled. I am grateful. Then, by the end of morning, he's gone, nothing but silence out of the tree where he rested for a night. And this I find acceptable. Not enough is a poor life. But too much is, well, too much. Imagine Verdi or Mahler every day, all day. It would exhaust anyone.

  Mary Oliver

  Morning, Spring, Fall

  Mary Oliver (2012). “A Thousand Mornings: Poems”, p.39, Penguin

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• He wanted us to play whatever we played in the most characteristic and appropriate style. Even it was the theme from 'The Godfather,' you needed to play that then the way that a Hollywood producer would expect it to be played. Whether it was that or the posthorn solo from Mahler's Symphony No. 3, he would expect that to be played in the way that Leonard Bernstein wanted to hear it. In retrospect, I think it was a sensational way to teach this particular group of students. By the time you graduated you could absolutely read anything with any trumpet.

  Manny Laureano

  Thinking, Play, Symphony

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• I cannot listen to Beethoven or Mahler or Chopin or Bach when I write because those composers require you stop what you are doing and listen.

  Antonio Damasio

  Writing, Composer

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• Mahler wrote it as the third movement of his Fourth Symphony. I mean the fourth movement of his First Symphony. We play it third. The trumpet solo will be played by our solo trumpet player. It's named 'Blumine,' which has something to do with flowers.

  Eugene Ormandy

  Funny, Flower, Mean

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• I cannot work and listen to Wagner at the same time, nor Mahler, nor Beethoven's late quartets. I enjoy listening to Chopin's piano music when I work.

  I. M. Pei

  Piano Music, Listening, Enjoy

  I. M. Pei, Gero von Boehm (2000). “Conversations with I. M. Pei: Light is the Key”, Prestel Pub

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• I love to read different books on completely different subjects at the same time. I cannot focus on one. I read a few pages of literature, then I jump to philosophy and at the same time I'm reading biographies of Mahler.

  Gustavo Dudamel

  Philosophy, Book, Reading

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I like to sing to Verdi, I like singing to Sibelius, and Mahler maybe.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Singing, Sibelius, Verdi

  "Crystal clear". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2005.

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