Richard Strauss: Doing

Richard Strauss was German composer and orchestra director. Explore interesting quotes on doing.

Richard Strauss: 62 quotes 4 likes

“The left hand has nothing to do with conducting. Its proper place is the waistcoat pocket from which it should only emerge to restrain or make some minor gesture for which in any case a scarcely perceptible glance should suffice.”

Richard Strauss

Recollections and Reflections

“I am not one to compose long melodies as did Mozart. I can’t get beyond short themes. But what I can do, is utilize such a theme, paraphrase it and extract everything that is in it, and I don’t think there’s anybody today who can match me in that.”

Richard Strauss

Quotes from Stefan Zweigs's posthumous memoire, The World of Yesterday. Zweig worked with Strauss closely on the opera The Silent Woman in the period 1931-1934 and got to know him well.
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Thinking

“I hope, most revered Maestro, that these metronome markings, in my opinion wholly unneeded by you, are specific enough. Where they do not fit with your conception, I implore you urgently just to ignore them.”

Richard Strauss

Letter to Hans Von Bulow, 15th January 1890, in Schuh and Trenner, Hans von Bulow and Richard Strauss: Correspondence, in English Boosey and Hawkes 1955. Von Bulow had asked for metronome markings from Strauss for Don Juan. [Italics Strauss]
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Hope

“It is difficult composing endings. Beethoven and Wagner could do it. Only great composers can do it. I can do it too.”

Richard Strauss

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“Very fine, but why do you put so many wrong notes in? Basically, it is all built on simple triads.”

Richard Strauss

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