Wagner Quotes - Page 2

• I just can't listen to any more Wagner, you know...I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.

  Woody Allen

  Witty, Humorous, Conquer

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• Wagner used to read the libretti of his operas to his friends; I am glad I was not there.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Opera, Used, Glad

  Ralph Vaughan Williams (1987). “National Music: And Other Essays”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Art has become more than painting, sculpture or music: art is more than Van Gogh painting a landscape or Wagner composing an opera. The whole of reality itself has become the object of art.

  Paul Virilio

  Art, Reality, Sculpture

  Source: ctheory.net

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• I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner.

  Colm Toibin

  Song, Morning, Writing

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• Sometimes I have the feeling that you are not quite aware--and this honors you--of the historical greatness of your position, that you think too modestly about yourself. Everything you do is destined to be of historic significance. One day, your letters, your decisions, will belong to all mankind, like those of Wagner and Brahms.

  Stefan Zweig

  Greatness, Thinking, Decision

  Richard Strauss, Stefan Zweig (1977). “A Confidential Matter: The Letters of Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig, 1931-1935”, p.67, Univ of California Press

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• Ah! My dear friend painting is to us what the music of Berlioz and Wagner was before us - a consolatory art for sore hearts! And yet there are only a few like you and me who feel it!!!

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Art, Painting, Like You

  Vincent van Gogh, Martin Bailey (1990). “Vicent van Gogh, letters from Provence”, Editorial Biblos

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• Wagner festival was [Adolf Hitler] time with the Wagner family. [Eva Braun] asked once to attend but he forbade it and that was that, she never asked again.

  Gretl Braun

  Festivals

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• You have to distinguish between things that seemed odd when they were new but are now quite familiar, such as Ibsen and Wagner, and things that seemed crazy when they were new and seem crazy now, like 'Finnegans Wake' and Picasso.

  Philip Larkin

  Crazy, Odd, Finnegans Wake

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• ...there isn't often anything in Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Humorous, Names

  Mark Twain (2015). “Mark Twain's Essays: Top Essays”, p.131, 谷月社

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• I am under no illusion that I will ever be the greatest opera composer in the world, with Wagner and Verdi and Strauss before me. I think my work could fit very nicely into musicals, though.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Thinking, World, Opera

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• Wagner exploited all forms of expression at a composer's disposal - harmony, dynamics, orchestration - to the extreme. His music is highly emotional, and at the same time Wagner has extraordinary control over the effect he achieves.

  Daniel Barenboim

  Emotional, Expression, Dynamics

  Interview with Joachim Kronsbein and Bernhard Zand, www.spiegel.de. June 22, 2012.

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• What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself.

  Richard Wagner

  Song, Other Worlds, Humanity

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• My wife was an opera singer, you know. She bellowed her way through Wagner as a Valkyrie. I married her and made her give up the theatre, to my eternal cost. She was to go on acting for myself alone. A performance at his own expense, lasting for more than twenty years, tends to wear out your spectator.

  Jean Anouilh

  Giving Up, Years, Wife

  Jean Anouilh “The Waltz of the Toreadors”

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• Thankfully, it is getting better for women composers. We now have five women Pulitzer Prize winners in music since 1983: Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Shulamit Ran, Melinda Wagner, Jennifer Higdon, and Caroline Shaw. When Marin Alsop was asked what it felt like to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, she said, "I am exceedingly proud to be 'the first' but I am also a bit shocked that there can still be firsts for women in 2013!"

  Barbara Harbach

  Night, Get Better, Proud

  Source: www.barbaraharbach.com

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• We've been listening to Wagner, which is so great.

  Bernadette Peters

  Listening

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• The first typical adolescent of modern times was Wagner's Siegfried. : the music of Siegfried expressed for the first time that combination of (provisional) purity, physical strength, naturism, spontaneity and joie de vivre which was to make the adolescent the hero of our twentieth century, the century of adolescence.

  Philippe Aries

  Strength, Music, Hero

  Philippe Ariès (1962). “Centuries of childhood: a social history of family life”, Vintage

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• When I was about 19, my stepmother said - because this was back in the 80s - that I had Robert Wagners pompadour. I said, What are you talking about? You mean the guy from Hart to Hart?

  Michael Weatherly

  Mean, Talking, Guy

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• Wagner is the Puccini of music.

  J. B. Morton

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• I think I have a pretty good ear. I mean, even just starting with, like, Austin Powers, where I did young Robert Wagner. People were, like, "How do you imitate Robert Wagner? What does he sound like? What does that even involve?".

  Rob Lowe

  Mean, Thinking, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I don't know if you've ever seen this film called Elite Squad, which, actually Wagner [Moura] is the one narrating that. José Padilha, one of creators of our show, that's where the style comes from. It has a heavy narrator. But I thought about it a lot. You [the viewers] have to work for the show, unless you're bilingual. It's a really aggressive type of filming, it's engaging, you've got to read.

  Boyd Holbrook

  Squad, Style, Narrators

  Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

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• I love Italian opera - it's so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don't care about their immortal souls, and don't worry about the ultimate.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Love, Running, Fate

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton (2002). “The Letters of D. H. Lawrence”, p.247, Cambridge University Press

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• My own duty as a teacher...is not so much to interpret Beethoven, Wagner, or other masters of the past, but to give what encouragement I can to the young musicians of America. I...hope that just as this nation has already surpassed so many others in marvelous inventions and feats of engineering and commerce, and has made an honorable place for itself in literature in one short century, so it must assert itself on the...art of music...To bring about this result, we must trust the very youthful enthusiasm and patriotism of this country.

  Antonin Dvorak

  Country, Teacher, Encouragement

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• I am honored to have John Lloyd called the Black Wagner. It is a privilege to have been compared with him.

  Honus Wagner

  Black, Privilege, Honored

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• If Richard Wagner lived today, he would probably work with film instead of music. He already knew back then that the 'Great Art Form' would include a sort of fourth dimension; it was really film he was talking about.

  Harmony Korine

  Art, Talking, Today

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• As Mark Twain said, 'I love Wagner -- if only they'd cut out all that damned singing!'

  Edward Abbey

  Cutting, Singing, Said

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.40, RosettaBooks

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