'Artists who say they practise eight hours a day are liars or asses' - Andres Segovia
'The Detroit Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost.' - ANON critic
Definition of a true musician: when he hears a lady singing in the bath - he puts his ear to the keyhole!
'The Flute is not an instrument which has a good moral effect - it is too exciting.' - Aristotle
'You are a prince because you were born a prince - I am a great musician because I have struggled and strived and worked my socks off all my life! There are lots of princes........there is only one Ludwig Van Beethoven!' (Hehad a point - didn't he?)
Weber on Beethoven's 7th Symphony - 'The extravagances of Beethoven's genius have reached the ne plus ultra in the seventh symphony, and he is quite ripe for the madhouse.'
Schumann on Wagner - 'For me Wagner is impossible....he talks without ever stopping. One just can't talk all the time.'
Wagner on Schumann - 'It is impossible to communicate with Schumann. The man is hopeless;he does not talk at all.'
'If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.' - Oscar Wilde
The accompanist Gerald Moore tells of a certain bass he once accompanied - or tried to. Finding Schubert's Der Einsame too high in the key of F and too low in the key of E, the singer then asked Moore if he had 'nothing in between'.
When asked why he doesn't sing in the bath, Luciano Pavarotti replied: 'Are you making a joke? Singing is work.'
'This fault is common to all singers: when their friends ask them to sing, they are unwilling, but when they are unasked they will never leave off.' - Horace
'How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.' - Gioachino Rossini
'Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings.' - Ed Gardner, American broadcaster
Sleep is an excellent way of listening to opera' - James Stephens
E-mail your Musical Anecdotes, jokes and stories.
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