Arnold Schoenberg: Quotes about music

Arnold Schoenberg was Austrian-American composer. Explore interesting quotes on music.

Arnold Schoenberg: 40 quotes 2 likes

“I believe that he (Strauss) will remain one of the characteristic and outstanding figures in musical history. Works like Salome, Elektra and Intermezzo, and others will not perish.”

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg, (1946); as quoted in A Schoenberg reader - Documents of a life, edited by Joseph Auner, Yale University Press 2003, page 316-17
1940s

Music , History

“My music is not modern, it is merely badly played”

Arnold Schoenberg

Genette, Gérard. 1997. Immanence and Transcendence, translated by G. M. Goshgarian. p. 102
Undated

Music

“I find above all that the expression, "atonal music," is most unfortunate — it is on a par with calling flying "the art of not falling," or swimming "the art of not drowning."”

Arnold Schoenberg

"Hauer's Theories" (Notes of November 1923), in Style and Idea (1985), p. 210
1920s

Art , Music , Flying

“If music is frozen architecture, then the potpourri is frozen coffee-table gossip… Potpourri is the art of adding apples to pears…”

Arnold Schoenberg

quote from Glosses on the Theories of Others (1929); also in Style and Idea (1985), p. 313-314
1920s

Art , Music , Coffee

“My music is not lovely.”

Arnold Schoenberg

Quoted by Theodor Adorno in his essay "Art and the Arts", 1966, reproduced in Clausen 2008, 387 http://books.google.com/books?id=JaVBgTmaSgYC&lpg=PA387).
Undated

Love , Music