Sergei Rachmaninov
(1873-1943)
RACHMANINOV ON MUSIC
Here are some famous and not-so-famous quotes by the composer, giving an idea of his views on music and musicians.
"Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music"
"Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of musical trash"
"I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me"
"Too much radical music is sheer sham, for this very reason: its composer sets about revolutionizing the laws of music before he learned them himself"
"I can respect the artistic aim of a composer if he arrives at the so-called modern idiom after an intense period of preparation"
"I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new"
"Music comes straight from the heart and talks only to the heart: it is Love"
"My dear hands. Farewell, my poor hands"
"A good conductor ought to be a good chauffeur; the qualities that make the one also make the other"
"Music is the Sister of Poetry and her Mother is sorrow"
"I left behind my desire to compose: losing my country, I lost myself also"
“The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.”
“I compose music because I must give expression to my feelings, just as I talk because I must give utterance to my thoughts.”
Pianist Josef Hofmann on Rachmaninov: “Rachmaninoff was made of steel and gold : steel in his arms, gold in his heart. I can never think of this majestic being without tears in my eyes, for I not only admired him as a supreme artist, but I loved him as a man”.
Eugene Istomin on Rachmaninov: “Rachmaninov is undoubtedly the greatest pianist I have ever heard. He had an irresistible, compelling eloquence, which came from his sound and the depth of feeling he conveyed. His face looked like a Buddhist mask, but what came out of the piano was both intoxicating and upsetting. I kept alive in me the memory of his playing, his presence on the stage, this incredible combination of power and speed, like a tiger. What came out of the piano was gold, and made your heart melt.”
Eugene Istomin writes about Rachmaninov’s later years: “His inspiration was giving signs of drying up. His last works, the Fourth Concerto and the Symphonic Dances, two marvelous works, were pilloried, taken very lightly, and treated very badly. I remember Serkin telling me that Rachmaninov told him that his music was regarded as cheap stuff, cheap trash. He personally did not think so, but he knew that many musicians thought that way. Yes, he was sad, somber, melancholic, and impassible – but I know from his friends and family that he was also extremely tender and gentle, and that he liked to laugh a lot.”
"I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me"