Tchaikovsky Quotes

• I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He gets a bad rap; hes very misunderstood. Hes a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.

  Joni Mitchell

  Teacher, Rap, Hero

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• He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin while you went out in the world and met the obligations required of you. Certainly he knew (though did not completely understand) that opera wasn't for everyone, but for everyone he hoped there was something. The records he cherished, the rare opportunities to see a live performance, those were the marks by which he gauged his ability to love.

  Ann Patchett

  Opportunity, True Life, Records

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• Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear.

  Eduard Hanslick

  Giving, Ears, Violin

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• Roll over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the news.

  Chuck Berry

  News

  1956 'Roll over Beethoven'.

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• My whole trick is to keep the tune well out in front. If I play Tchaikovsky, I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggle.

  Liberace

  Music, Spiritual, Struggle

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• [Peter] Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" was my first go-to song in terms of getting into the zone and getting ready and then I quickly gravitated to rock and roll music in the mid-'60s with the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Beatles, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Rolling Stones, Carlos Santana. So many of them are still around and still going strong. I go out to see them all the time.

  Bill Walton

  Song, Strong, Grateful

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Those who were still able to write beautiful melodies were kitsch composers like Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky approaches true art not in his numerous beautiful melodies, but when a melodic line is thwarted.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Beautiful, Art, Writing

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• Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky were not classical musicians while they were alive and active, they were the rock stars of their day.

  Seymour Stein

  Stars, Rocks, Musician

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I listed to Tchaikovsky. He is both kitsch and profound. I love that lack of "Good taste."

  Cy Twombly

  Profound, Kitsch, Taste

  "Kitsch art: love it or loathe it?" by Jonathan Jones, www.theguardian.com. January 28, 2013.

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• For me, listening to Beethoven and Tchaikovsky in particular, there's an emotional aspect - very different kinds of emotional aspects from those two composers, nonetheless, very strong emotional aspects from both of those composers.

  Crispin Glover

  Strong, Emotional, Two

  Interview with David Wolinsky, film.avclub.com. November 21, 2007.

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• For me to rehearse with a children's orchestra a Mahler symphony was to really work. We had three or four weeks of rehearsal with the orchestra, every day eight or nine hours, putting the First together. I had been conducting Tchaikovsky a lot and Beethoven, but Mahler was different.

  Gustavo Dudamel

  Children, Eight, Symphony

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• So who's perfect? ... Washington had false teeth. Franklin was nearsighted. Mussolini had syphilis. Unpleasant things have been said about Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde. Tchaikovsky had his problems, too. And Lincoln was constipated.

  John O'Hara

  Perfect, Syphilis, Teeth

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• The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Lakes, Swans, Radio

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Absurdistan”, p.181, Granta Books

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• They say that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a homosexual. Truth be told, we don't love him because of that, but he was a great musician, and we all love his music. So what? I assure you that I work with these people. I sometimes award them with state prizes or decorations for their achievements in various fields. We have absolutely normal relations, and I don't see anything out of the ordinary here.

  Vladimir Putin

  Gay, Awards, People

  "Tchaikovsky May Have Been Gay, Putin Reluctantly Admits" by • Alexander Abad-Santos, www.theatlantic.com. September 4, 2013.

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• I enjoy the kind of characters that allow you to write the dark stuff. I love Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, and when I'm writing for Dracula or Jekyll & Hyde, I get a chance to use that vocabulary.

  Frank Wildhorn

  Character, Writing, Dark

  Interview with Pati Buehler, www.broadwayworld.com. June 13, 2004.

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• If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky, they can learn to say Uzoamaka.

  Uzo Aduba

  Dostoyevsky, Ifs

  "Why Uzo Aduba Wouldn’t Change Her Nigerian Name For Acting headshot" by Jessica Dickerson, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 26, 2014.

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• On the corner of 57th and 7th Avenue sits the most famous concert hall in the world. No less a figure than when Tchaikovsky led the first performances in 1891. Virtually every major artist has performed there. There is simply no place like it. The first time I stepped foot in Carnegie Hall was in 1964.

  Leonard Slatkin

  Artist, Feet, World

  Leonard Slatkin (2017). “Leading Tones: Reflections on Music, Musicians, and the Music Industry”, p.199, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• A friend gave me a CD of the 'Pathetique' Symphony as a Christmas present. I went home, and I put on the CD expecting to listen to Tchaikovsky. But it started 'ta ta ta taaa.' It was too long for me. I didn't understand it at first, but then I fell in love, in love, in love.

  Gustavo Dudamel

  Home, Cds, Symphony

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• The Rhapsody is not a composition at all. It's a string of separate paragraphs stuck together - with a thin paste of flour and water... I don't think there has been such an inspired melodist on this earth since Tchaikovsky... but if you want to speak of a composer, that's another matter.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Thinking, Water, Together

  "Why Don't You Run Upstairs and Write a Nice Gershwin Tune?". The Atlantic Monthly, April 1955.

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