“I found it as alluring as a wayward woman and determined to tame it.”
Of the music of Frederick Delius
Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 31-37 ISBN 0-575-04088-2
Thomas Beecham: 12 quotes1 like
Famous Thomas Beecham Quotes
“What can you do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about.”
On Beethoven's Seventh Symphony
Quoted in Atkins and Newman, Beecham Stories, 1978
“The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.”
Quoted in Atkins and Newman, Beecham Stories, 1978
“Too much counterpoint; what is worse, Protestant counterpoint.”
Of J. S. Bach; quoted by Neville Cardus, Guardian, 8 March 1971
“The musical equivalent of the towers of St Pancras Station”
Of Edward Elgar's 1st symphony
Neville Cardus: Sir Thomas Beecham, A Memoir, (1961)
“Asked if he had ever conducted any Stockhausen, he said, "No, but I once trod in some."”
http://www.paulcarey.net/Quotes.htm http://www.stockhausen.org/licht_by_malcolm_ball.html
“If I cannot sing a work, I cannot conduct it.”
Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 31-37 ISBN 0-575-04088-2
Of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony
Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 31-37 ISBN 0-575-04088-2
Thomas Beecham Quotes about music
“The grand tune is the only thing in music that the great public really understands.”
Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 31-37 ISBN 0-575-04088-2
“No composer has written as much as 100 bars of worthwhile music since 1925.”
Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 31-37 ISBN 0-575-04088-2
[Beecham admitted to Neville Cardus that he had made this up on the spur of the moment to satisfy an importunate journalist; he acknowledged that it was an oversimplification. (Neville Cardus: 'Sir Thomas Beecham, A Memoir', 1961)]
“A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.”
Quoted by H. Proctor-Gregg, Beecham Remembered (1976), p. 154
