Quotes about piano

A collection of quotes on the topic of piano, play, likeness, music.

Frédéric Chopin quote: “I tell my piano the things I used to tell you”

Quotes about piano

“I tell my piano the things I used to tell you”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

“It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Soul

“The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

This statement was attributed to Goering in at least one book on World War II, but it was removed from the English Wikipedia page on him on grounds that it was not actually verified that Goering had ever said it.
Disputed
Context: In 1940 I could at least fly as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops. After the war is over I'm going to buy a British radio set – then at least I'll own something that has always worked.

Beauty, Speed

“Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano!”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

As quoted in Chopin and the Swedish Nightingale.
Source: Jorgensen's Chopin and the Swedish Nightingale (2003), p. 26

Suffering, Despair

“I haven't touched a piano in so many years. I couldn't play with such crippled fingers, even if I wanted to. For a time after my marriage I tried to keep up my music. But it was hopeless. One-night stands, cheap hotels, dirty trains, leaving children, never having a home — [She stares at her hands with fascinated disgust. ] See, Cathleen, how ugly they are! So maimed and crippled! You would think they'd been through some horrible accident! [She gives a strange little laugh. ] So they have, come to think of it. [She suddenly thrusts her hands behind her back. ] I won't look at them. They're worse than the foghorn for reminding me — [Then with defiant self-assurance. ] But even they can't touch me now. [She brings her hands from behind her back and deliberately stares at them — calmly. ] They're far away. I see them, but the pain has gone.”

Eugene O'Neill Long Day's Journey into Night

Page 106 (Act 3)
Long Day's Journey into Night (1955)

Pain, Marriage, Children, Music

“I dream music but I cannot make any because here there are not any pianos . . . in this respect this is a savage country.”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Letter to Camille Pleyel.
Context: My piano has not yet arrived. How did you send it? By Marseilles or by Perpignan? I dream music but I cannot make any because here there are not any pianos... in this respect this is a savage country.

Dreams, Music, Country

“I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Country

“I don't play accurately--any one can play accurately--but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Life, Science

“It was quite impossible to describe.

Here is what it looked like.

It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and it felt Paisley. It smelled like the total eclipse of the moon.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

“Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference.
So unless were going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

Source: The Gun Seller (1996)

Death, Sense, Time

“If, while at the piano, you attempt to form little melodies, that is very well; but if they come into your mind of themselves, when you are not practising, you may be still more pleased; for the internal organ of music is then roused in you. The fingers must do what the head desires; not the contrary.”

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) German composer, aesthete and influential music critic

Music

“When there's a moon the shadows in the house grow larger;
invisible hands draw back the curtains,
a pallid finger writes forgotten words on dust
of the piano…”

Yiannis Ritsos (1909–1990) Greek poet

Source: The Fourth Dimension

Drawing, Housing

“A football team is like a piano. You need eight men to carry it and three who can play the damn thing.”

Bill Shankly (1913–1981) Scottish footballer and manager

Quoted by John Toshack in Kevin McCarra, "How Benítez built Liverpool," http://football.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1691681,00.html The Guardian (2006-01-21)

Men, Football

“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Funeral Blues (1936)

Dogs, Silence

“The kids are starting to burn this place and to trash it. They're dragging a grand piano down the stairs. It's the destruction of high culture, about which they're nothing but cynical, because they don't believe that hard work and sacrifice can produce something of any value. They want to bring it down and destroy it. You can see it in the story of Cain and Abel. Abel is hard working and everyone likes him, and he makes the proper sacrifices, so his life goes really well. And that's part of the reason that Cain hates him. He's jealous and resentful, but worse than that – if you're not doing very well and you're around someone who is doing very well it's painful, because the mere fact of their Being judges you. And so it's very easy to want to destroy that ideal so that you don't have to live with the terrible consequences of seeing it embodied in front of you. And so part of the reason that people want to tear things down is so that they don't have anything to contrast themselves against and to feel bad. And that's exactly what's happening here. Kids are destroying all of this culture, because the fact that it exists judges them.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

2017 Maps of Meaning 4: Marionettes and Individuals (Part 3) [54:55-56:15]
Maps of Meaning

Life, Pain, Hate, People

“[Women's] boarding schools, as we know, hold the three principal subjects which constitute the basis of human virtue to be the French language (a thing indispensable to the happiness of married life), piano-playing (a thing wherewith to beguile a husband’s leisure moments), and that particular department of housewifery which is comprised in the knitting of purses and other “surprises.” Nevertheless changes and improvements have begun to take place, since things now are governed more by the personal inclinations and idiosyncracies of the keepers of such establishments. For instance, in some seminaries the regimen places piano-playing first, and the French language second, and then the above department of housewifery; while in other seminaries the knitting of “surprises” heads the list, and then the French language, and then the playing of pianos—so diverse are the systems in force!”

Nikolai Gogol book Dead Souls

Vol. 1, ch. 2
Dead Souls (1842)

Life, Women, Happiness, School

“I’m very happy that so many children are learning the piano because of me.”

Li Yundi (1982) Chinese pianist

telegraph.co.uk http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/10863146/Lang-Lang-Weve-never-met.html

Happiness, Children, Learning

“The piano plays a central role in Prokofiev’s oeuvre. Not only are his works for piano solo or piano with orchestra numerous, but they also rank among his more important compositions. The piano was the first instrument Prokofiev heard and the only one he mastered.”

Boris Berman (1948) Russian/American musician

Prokofiev’s piano sonatas : a guide for the listener and the performer (2008), Prokofiev the pianist

“Voices were blended and intermingled in a tumultuous swirl around which eddied laughter, shouts, the squeaking of doors and windows, piano and accordion music, rollicking handclaps, a policeman's bark, braying, grunts, coughs of hashish addicts and screams of drunkards, anonymous calls for help, raps of a stick, and singing by individuals and groups.”

Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) Egyptian writer

Mahfouz (1957) Palace of Desire Part II; Cited in Matt Schudel " Leading Arab Novelist Gave Streets a Voice http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083000475.html" in: Washington Post, August 31, 2006

Music, Laughter, Singing, Help

“It still starts the same way - with a piano. I use technology but don't really rely upon it. I think it should be part of the process, not the entire process.”

Joe Hisaishi (1950) Japanese composer and musician

Joe Hisaishi, who wrote music for Hayao Miyazaki's films https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1780283/studio-ghibli-composer-joe-hisaishi-talks-about-how,South China Morning Post

Way, Thinking, Parting

“What I have just heard is pure... listen!... radiance, that you took from cloud-linings and sunrises and distilled into light that I can hear! Do you know how good, how lovely that is, what you can make the piano do?”

Richard Bach book The Bridge Across Forever

Source: The Bridge Across Forever (1984), Ch. 21

Love, Light

“When I was a naive young recruit in Spain, I used to wonder why soldiers bayoneted oil paintings, shot the noses off statues and defecated into grand pianos. I now understand: it was to teach civilians the deepest sort of respect for men in uniform — uncontrollable fear.”

Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

"Harold Ryan"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)

Men, Fear, Understanding, Painting

“When I was a child the atmosphere in the house was one of puritan piety and austerity. There were family prayers at eight o'clock every morning. Although there were eight servants, food was always of Spartan simplicity, and even what there was, if it was at all nice, was considered too good for children. For instance, if there was apple tart and rice pudding, I was only allowed the rice pudding. Cold baths all the year round were insisted upon, and I had to practice the piano from seven-thirty to eight every morning although the fires were not yet lit. My grandmother never allowed herself to sit in an armchair until the evening. Alcohol and tobacco were viewed with disfavor although stern convention compelled them to serve a little wine to guests. Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 9

Happiness, Children, Health, Alcohol

“My emotions are expressed through the piano.”

Li Yundi (1982) Chinese pianist

telegraph.co.uk http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/10863146/Lang-Lang-Weve-never-met.html

“I was never interested in studies. And honestly, I never felt I had it in me to make good music. I guess, the environment in which I grew up — dad neck-deep in music, my sister Bavatharini on the piano all the time and brother Karthik Raja constantly hooked on the latest music technology — just stirred me to take the first step. ‘Thuluvatho Ilamai’ and ‘Poovellam Kaettupaar’ proved to be turning points.”

Yuvan Shankar Raja (1979) Indian musician

Yuvan Unplugged (2009)

Music, Sister, Study, Time

“Never have your wallet with you onstage. It's bad luck. You shouldn't play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money.
Tom Waits (to me, about 1986 or so)”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Money, Bad luck, Waiting

“When you own a piano, it's harder to think about moving.”

Stephen King book Misery

Source: Misery

Thinking

“And so they played some of the world's loveliest piano music - the exiled homesick girl, the humiliated, tired old man. Not properly. Better than that.”

Eva Ibbotson book A Countess Below Stairs

Source: A Countess Below Stairs

World, Music, Girl

“We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Dreams, Learning, Perfection

“But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?"
Yes… the same age you will be if you don't.”

Julia Cameron book The Artist's Way

Source: The Artist's Way

Age, Learning, Time, Painting

“I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

As quoted in An Uncommon Scold (1989) by Abby Adams, p. 176

“Grammar is a piano I play by ear.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

Source: Essays & Conversations

“The piano has been drinking, not me.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

"The Piano Has Been Drinking", Small Change (1976).

Drink

“Making love without noise is like playing a muted piano-fine for practice, but you cheat yourself out of hearing the glorious results.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Love, Making love, Cheating

“Jace Herondale plays the piano very well.”
“And he knows it.”
“That sounds like a Herondale.” Tessa laughed.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“I'd never seen a guy my own age play the piano. It was like sex and musical theatre fused together.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: Dramarama

Age, Music, Sex, Guy

“Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

Lovers

“Beauty doesn't have to beanything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto?”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt

Beauty, Flowers

“My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth there's hardly any difference.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

As quoted in Esquire, Vol. 76 (1971), also in Truman's Crises : A Political Biography of Harry S. Truman (1980) by Harold Foote Gosnell, p. 9; sometimes paraphrased: Being a politician is like being a piano player in a whorehouse.

Life, Truth

“Saying you like "Piano Man" doesn't mean you like Billy Joel; it means you're willing to go to a piano bar if there's nothing else to do”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

“What would you give someone who likes to play the piano?”
“A piano.”
“Simon.”
“A really huge metronome that could also double as a weapon?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“I'll go to the south of Sicily in the winter, and paint memories of Arles – I'll buy a piano and Mozart me that – I'll write long sad tales about people in the legend of my life – This part is my part of the movie, let's hear yours”

Jack Kerouac book Tristessa

Source: Tristessa

Life, People, Sadness, Memory

“Everybody told me this 'girl on the piano' thing was never going to work.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

Girl

“When she started to play, Steinway came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano.”

Bob Hope (1903–2003) American comedian, actor, singer and dancer

Personality

“She taught me to play the piano, and what it meant to miss somebody.”

Eric Roth (1945) American screenwriter

Source: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

“Love is a piano dropped from a four story window and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
-Two Little Girls (Little Plastic Castle)”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Love, Girl, Time

“Roger: I was super, crazy little! Yeah, like my dad's a guitar player and my uncle was in bands when I was growing up. I sat behind a drum set when I was like six years old. I started taking piano lessons when I was like nine. So, like I've been around music my whole, entire, entire life.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Life, Music

“Rubinstein was wonderful. For three days he spent hours playing the piano in my room, and then asking me what I thought of this and that. After a while he told my mother that I had talent and he thought I should be a musician.”

Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982) Polish-American classical pianist

Antonio de Almeida — reported in Paul Hume (July 28, 1981) "Odyssey Of a Conductor", The Washington Post, p. C4.
About

“The piano is the only keyboard instrument in which one can grandly vary the effects of the harmonics or overtones of a chord at will by balancing the sonority in different ways.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002), Ch. 1 Body and Mind

Way

“The abstracts are the opposite to work on. That process is more like walking, step by step, without an intention, until you discover where you are going. When I paint a landscape from a photograph or an image like this one, I can see the end point before I start, although in fact it always turns out slightly different than I imagined. What I have is not facility, because this really doesn't take skill. I have an eye. I couldn't make a drawing of you sitting here right now. I would love to have that ability, in the same way that I would love to play the piano. Virtuosity is a precondition for pianists, but in addition you have to be good. These are not the same thing.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Love, Way, Imagination, Drawing

“I set up the Orchestra in 1939. I had had my supporters by that time and they used to follow me and scream during my shows. I used to like it, but said to myself: "be humble Osvaldo, don't be arrogant." There were sometimes I was in prison and a cousin of mine (a policeman) used to replaced me on the piano.”

Osvaldo Pugliese (1905–1995) Argentine pianist, tango composer

Unsourced

Support, Time

“[another part / version of Whistler's lecture:]
Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful—as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he bring forth from chaos glorious harmony. To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player, that he may sit on the piano. That Nature is always right, is an assertion, artistically, as untrue, as it is one whose truth is universally taken for granted. Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that Nature is usually wrong: that is to say, the condition of things that shall bring about the perfection of harmony worthy a picture is rare, and not common at all.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

1870 - 1903, his lecture 'Ten O'Clock' (1885)
Source: James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), Weinberg, H. Barbara, 'Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History'. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/whis/hd_whis.htm (April 2010)

Truth, Beauty, Music, Nature

“I'm a writer who plays the piano. As I write, I find new things I like. I make them into what I call principles, and they become part of my playing vocabulary. That's the secret of what you get from composing. You get to discover things that you wouldn't ordinarily do. Much like a speech pattern, your improvisation patterns can get stale if you don't keep building your vocabulary. Each time you re voice something, you change the sound. When you do this enough, you get used to those sounds, and they start to come out as you play. You end up using voicings that aren't common, which gives you an auditory identity.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "Voicing With a Heart"

Secret, Change, Time, Parting

“Ideally, a song should contain both elements of high melodic tension, and low melodic tension. No listener wants to sit through a totally high-energy 180 BPM non-stop 6-minute ride through synth mania unless they are already busy grooving madly on some dance floor in a smoky club somewhere. Also, unless your listener is on heavy sedation, he or she will not enjoy your sparse 18-minute ambient tune which consists of the same languid piano riff repeated over and over again.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

"Melodic Structure", Necros, TraxWeekly #15, 1995

Business, Dance

“(about her beginnings) "People assume I always wanted to be a violinist. It was actually just one of many other hobbies that I had. I had very enthusiastic parents. They gave me swimming lessons and horseback riding and gymnastics and ballet. My mom put me on the piano when I was about 3i. I asked for the violin when I was 4 because I wanted something that was smaller and more portable. I auditioned for the Juilliard School when I was about 6. During the week, I went to a regular school in Philadelphia so I could be with kids my own age." and "I started my career when I was 8 with two debuts in New York and Philadelphia, and then I started recording when I was 9. When you're so young, you don't realize the impact of a New York Philharmonic debut. You're told to do something and you go out and do it and you don't ask too many questions. I think the questions come later when you're in your teens. By the time I was 14, I was spending probably half the year in Europe. So I was out of school a lot. I did most of my homework by e-mail or fax. We made it work because my professors were incredible."”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

Newsweek September 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14870541/site/newsweek/?page=6

People, Age, School, Moms

“It is with philosophy as with just intonation on a piano, if you get everything quite straight and on all fours in one department, in perfect tune, it is delightful so long as you keep well in the middle of the key; but as soon as you modulate you find the new key is out of tune and the more remotely you modulate the more out of tune you get.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Philosophy and Equal Temperament
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XX - First Principles

Perfection

“Edwin Fischer was, on the concert platform, a short, leonine, resilient figure, whose every fiber seemed to vibrate with elemental musical power. Wildness and gentleness were never far from each other in his piano-playing, and demonic outbursts would magically give way to inner peace. It was as little trouble to him (as Alfred Polgar once said of an actor) to lose himself as to find himself.
His playing of slow movements was full of an unselfconsciousness beside which the music-making of others, famous names included, seemed academic or insincere. With Fischer, one was in more immediate contact with the music: there was no curtain before the soul when he communicated with the audience. One other musician, Furtwangler, conveyed to the same degree this sensation of music not being played, but rather happening by itself.”

Alfred Brendel (1931) Austrian pianist, poet, and author

As cited in: Ruth Hanna Sachs, ‎D. E. Heap, ‎Joyce Light (2005). White Rose History, Volume II (Academic Version). p. 366

Peace, Music, Way, Soul

“Jeff Foxworthy is having his house repainted and he has a piano in the corner
Painter: Is that y'all's piano?
Jeff: No, that's our coffee table. It just has buck teeth. Here's your sign.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Here's Your Sign

Coffee, Housing

“My main orientation is harmonic. Bill, besides having the harmonic structures that he did, had a control of the dynamic level of the piano and pedaling, which is ridiculously fantastic. I never saw a man make so many gradations from pianissimo to piano in my life. I can't do that. On the other hand, I think that what I do harmonically is somewhere other than where he was.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT453 (1992, 2006, 2014)

Life, Thinking

“This is a James Taylor moment and we are stuck with a piano player who wants to sound like Enya and a southern funk band that, somewhere along the line, fell into thinking Alabama is a sweet place to call home.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Home, Thinking

“I started making movies when I was 20. I started playing piano when I was about 3 years old, so I'm probably a musician first. But when I'm working on a movie, as an actor, I'm an actor - 100 percent. And when I'm on tour, I'm a musician 100 percent.”

Harry Connick, Jr. (1967) American singer, conductor, pianist, actor, and composer

The Costco Connection magazine interview, February 2007 http://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/200702/?pg=30

“The greatest car ever should get out there and do the job, but it should do more besides, which is why I have to say it's the Ferrari 355. This car is as much a piece of sculpture as a lump of engineering. You could derive as much pleasure from putting it in your living room, where the piano used to be, and looking at it as you could from going for a drive.”

Jeremy Clarkson book Born to be Riled

Source: Born to be Riled (1999), p. 23

Pleasure, Cars

“When the pots containing two worms which had remained quite indifferent to the sound of the piano, were placed on this instrument, and the note C in the bass clef was struck, both instantly retreated into their burrows.”

Charles Darwin book The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms

Source: The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881), Chapter 1: Habits of Worms, p. 28. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=43&itemID=F1357&viewtype=image

Indifference

“Lindsey [Buckingham] and I went up to Aspen and we went to somebody's incredible house and they had a piano and I had my guitar with me and I went in their living room, looking out over the incredible Aspen sky and I wrote 'Landslide.”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

Laura Furman, Rumours Exposed http://books.google.com/books?id=SW31aVVDc_AC (2003: Citadel Press), ISBN 9780806524726, p. 75

Housing

“Yet in a relatively short creative life of twenty years or so, Chopin redrew the boundaries of Romantic music, and his self-imposed restriction to the 88 keys of the piano keyboard sublimated nothing less than the aesthetic essence of piano music. It was his total identification with the instrument which, in its radical regeneration of the lyric and the dramatic, fantasy and passion and their unique fusion, shaped a tonal language which united an aristocratic sense of style and formal Classical training and intuition with an ascetic rigor. Chopin’s precisely marshaled trains of thought permitted no experiments, and so he did not ‘wander about’ within his stylistic points of reference as Scriabin was to do. Chopin’s works may seem light and improvisatory, but they are planned in meticulous details, exactly and well calculated.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Life, Music, Sense, Light

“The trends that produced Schumann’s early piano works started out not so much from Weber’s refined brilliance as from Schubert’s more intimate and deeply soul-searching idiom. His creative imagination took him well beyond the harmonic sequences known until his time. He looked at the fugues and canons of earlier composers and discovered in them a Romantic principle. In the interweaving of the voices, the essence of counterpoint found its parallel in the mysterious relationships between the human psyche and exterior phenomena, which Schumann felt impelled to express. Schubert’s broad melodic lyricism has often been contrasted with Schumann’s terse, often quickly repeated motifs, and by comparison Schumann is often erroneously seen as short-winded. Yet it is precisely with these short melodic formulae that he shone his searchlight into the previously unplumbed depths of the human psyche. With them, in a complex canonic web, he wove a dense tissue of sound capable of taking in and reflecting back all the poetical character present. His actual melodies rarely have an arioso form; his harmonic system combines subtle chromatic progressions, suspensions, a rapid alternation of minor and major, and point d’orgue. The shape of Schumann’s scores is characterized by contrapuntal lines, and can at first seem opaque or confused. His music is frequently marked by martial dotted rhythms or dance-like triple time signatures. He loves to veil accented beats of the bar by teasingly intertwining two simultaneous voices in independent motion. This highly inde-pendent instrumental style is perfectly attuned to his own particular compositional idiom. After a period in which the piano had indulged in sensuous beauty of sound and brilliant coloration, in Schumann it again became a tool for conveying poetic monologues in musical terms.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Love, Beauty, Music, Color

“First, technical perfection as something natural. Second, an insight into the development of the piano sound, as perfected by the pianist-composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, composers who understood the piano both as a human voice … and as an orchestra with which they could produce a variety of colors. Third, the need to learn how to use every aspect of our new instruments, which are richer in sound. Fourth, the importance of differentiation.”

Ivo Pogorelić (1958) Croatian pianist

Ivo Pogorelić about the most important things Aliza Kezeradze taught him, Die Zeit, Ich möchte gern mein Publikum sein, Hans Josef, Herbort, May 15, 1981, June 30, 2015 http://www.zeit.de/1981/21/ich-moechte-gern-mein-publikum-sein, (in German language)

Color, Nature, Learning, Perfection

“Talking about the particles, I know I don't have any special theory of particles. It's just the way it came out and that's the way I want to do it. Also, there are advantages to particles: you can't break them; they don't break apart. They don’t have any rigid connections; there are no rigid connections to break. The particles are always shifting around a little bit and you have to kick them back into shape. It's like tuning a piano every once in a while. I like the idea of something being permanent by being non-rigid, being absolutely non-rigid but not having a rigid form that can be broken. But a theory of particles, I don’t know. Maybe late one night after a few drinks I explained to Lucy Lippard a theory of particles. I'm sure I didn't remember the next day.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 30

Way, Idea, Drink, Night

“[About Mozart] In relation to God he is like a child who brings everything to his father: the stones from the street and peculiar sticks and little plants and even once a ladybug; and with him all of these things are melodies, melodies that he brings to God, melodies that he suddenly knows when he is inside of prayer. And when he has finished praying, and he is no longer on his knees and no longer has his hands folded, then he sits there at the piano, or he sings with an incredible childlikeness, and in doing so he no longer has any idea whether he is playing something for God or whether it is God who is using him to play something at once for himself and for Mozart. There is a great conversation between Mozart and God that is the purest prayer, and this entire conversation is nothing but music.”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

Book of All Saints (1966)

God, Music, Idea, Singing

“Just meeting Rubinstein was a thrill for any pianist. He was a real link to tradition in western piano music. He was a friend of Rachmaninoff and he knew Debussy. The man was an inspiration to three generations of pianists.”

Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982) Polish-American classical pianist

Emanuel Ax — reported in Joseph McLellan (December 21, 1982) "Concert Pianist Arthur Rubinstein Dies at 95", The Washington Post, p. A1.
About

Music

“He is Mr Piano Man, I am Miss Piano Man.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

on touring with Billy Joel
Sixty things for Sir Elton's 60th (2007)

“They went on playing quietly and waiting for Sam (who had gone back to the bedroom to seek Tommy) and for their turns to see Mother. Bonnie meanwhile, with a rueful expression, was leaning out the front window, and presently she could not help interrupting them, 'Why is my name Mrs Cabbage, why not Mrs Garlic or Mrs Horse Manure?' They did not hear her, so intent were they, visiting each other and inquiring after the health of their respective new babies. They did not hear her complaining to Louie that, instead of being Mrs Grand Piano or Mrs Stair Carpet, they called her Garbage, 'Greta Garbage, Toni Toilet,' said she laughing sadly, 'because they always see me out there with the garbage can and the wet mop; association in children's naïve innocent minds you see!'
'Oh no, it isn't that, protested Louie, Garbage is just a funny word: they associate you with singing and dancing and all those costumes you have in your trunk!”

Christina Stead book The Man Who Loved Children

'Do you think so?' Bonnie was tempted to believe. 'Mrs Strip Tease?'
The Man Who Loved Children (1940)

Children, Health, Thinking, Singing

“When I was a boy, the bestselling books were often the books that were on your piano teacher's shelf. I mean, Steinbeck, Hemingway, some Faulkner. Faulkner actually had, considering how hard he is to read and how drastic the experiments are, quite a middle-class readership. But certainly someone like Steinbeck was a bestseller as well as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent. You don't feel that now. I don't feel that we have the merger of serious and pop — it's gone, dissolving. Tastes have coarsened. People read less, they're less comfortable with the written word.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Salon interview (2000)

People, Books, Feeling, Boy

“As Kurt Vonnegut pointed out in his first novel, Player Piano, some people love problem-solving and tinkering—and that is the final, irreducible driver of human history. Wars and faiths and leaders come and go, but the problem-solvers’ slow, steady work is the fulcrum upon which history turns.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Afterword to Nooncoming, p. 104
In Alien Flesh (1986)

Love, War, People, Faith

“When asked which of the performances she is most proud of, Mumtaz said: "I was okay, nothing great at all. I liked Khilona that fetched me the Filmfare Best Actress Award. I also liked myself in Roop Tera Mastana, Aaina and Tere Mere Sapne. I should have won the Best Actress Award for Tere Mere Sapne. I really deserved it. Instead it went to Asha Parekh for Kati Patang in which she wore white and stood in front of piano doing precious little. Khair, jaane do (let it go). God has given me so much."”

Mumtaz (actress) (1947) Indian film actress

Quotes from Mumtaz

God

“The piano is always true to me. In times of despair, happiness, and joy, its mood is always my own.”

Bradley Joseph (1965) Composer, pianist, keyboardist, arranger, producer, recording artist

Album liner - Grand Piano (Narada Anniversay Collection)

Happiness, Mood, Time, Joy

“As for the piano, I was left to my own devices practically from the age of twelve. As is frequently the case in teachers' families, our parents were so busy with their pupils (literally from morning until late at night) that they hardly had any time for their own children. And that, in spite of the fact that with the favourable prejudice common to all parents, they had a very high opinion of my gifts. (I myself had a much more sober attitude. I was always aware of a great many faults although at times I felt that I had in me something "not quite usual".) But I won't speak of this. As a pianist, I am known. My good and bad points are known and nobody can be interested in my "prehistoric period". I will only say that because of this early "independence" I did a lot of silly things which I could have easily avoided if I had been under the vigilant eye of an experienced and intelligent teacher for another three or four years. I lacked what is known as a "school". I lacked discipline. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; my enforced independence compelled me, though sometimes by very devious ways, to achieve a great deal on my own and even my failures and errors subsequently proved more than once to be useful and educational, and in an occupation such as learning to master an art, where if not all, then almost all depends on individuality, the only sound foundation will always be the knowledge gained as the result of personal effort and personal experience.”

Heinrich Neuhaus (1888–1964) Soviet musician

The Art of Piano Playing (1958), Ch. 1. The Artistic Image of a Musical Composition

Children, Age, Education, School

“Maybe the years I spent playing the piano in taverns in Chicago and elsewhere led me to believe that the people who did that mundane work were as important to an understanding of art as the better-known players who produced the recognized classics of jazz. Growing up … may have led me to think that the craftsman who help make art works areas important as the people who conceive them… Learning the "Chicago tradition" of sociology from Everett C. Hughes and Herbert Blumer surely led to a skepticism about conventional definitions of the objects of sociological study.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. ix.

People, Art, Understanding, Thinking

“It is a recognised fact that the greatest composers were likewise the greatest virtuosos; but did they play like the pianists of the present day, who run up and down the keyboard with passages studied beforehand? Pooh! pooh! pooh! Don't tell me! A real virtuoso, when extemporising, plays pieces which hold together and possess a form. Were the ideas in them fixed instantly on paper, they would be taken for pieces written at leisure. That is what I call playing the piano; everything else is a bad joke.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

24th November, 1814
Source: Johann Wenzel Tomaschek, "A Talk with Beethoven", The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, Vol. 33, Beethoven Supplement (Dec. 15, 1892)

Idea, Study

“I started writing hits the day I sold my piano.”

Michael Cretu (1957) musician

As quoted by Lazae Laspina , in Contemporary Musicians Vol. 14 (May 1995).

“When I’m creating at the piano, I tend to feel happy; but - the eternal dilemma - how can we be happy amid the unhappines, of other? I’d do everything I could to give everyone a moment of happines. That’s what’s at the heart of my music.”

Nino Rota (1911–1979) Italian composer

http://www.exnovoensemble.it/files/rotanoteEng.shtml

Happiness, Music, Feeling, Heart

“I'd play the piano at 5am.”

Lang Lang (1982) Chinese pianist

theguardian.com http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/may/14/lang-lang-piano-china-father

“I'm not a Baptist in any formal way. I go to the Baptist church, where my wife plays the piano, on days of bad weather. On days of good weather, I ramble off into the woods somewhere. I am a person who takes the Gospel seriously, but I have had trouble conforming my thoughts to a denomination.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

The Brian Lehrer Show (17 October 2013) http://www.wnyc.org/story/wendell-berry/

Way, Personality, Weather

“I’m very skeptical in approaching Bach as a clean slate. To understand Bach, one has to be at home in the whole literature of art and interpretation; one must have great experience in performing the complete literature, from Bach until the early avantgarde. I’m absolutely convinced that only by this deep knowledge one can feel the all-embracing range of effects that are compressed in Bach and his music - and how later generations have been inspired. Only by this experience you can give the Bach interpretation a new balance and tension. In the case of the Goldberg Variations we are confronted with these all-emotional effects, and I’m also skeptical whether this all-embracing range can be touched by much too young players, on harpsichord as well as on piano. Knowing the true worth of this condensed and nearly welded-in polyphonic structure and singular musical architecture, one ultimately knows that it is impossible to play with the variations, meaning to change voices, or make doublings. Then the music itself would be robbed of its true worth and sense, which can only be revealed by bringing out the embedded simplicity, which however is transformed to an electrified, heated atmosphere. One has to respect the internal strength.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Art, Music, Feeling, Home

“Sing us a song you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight.
Well we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us feeling alright.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Piano Man.
Song lyrics, Piano Man (1973)

Feeling, Mood, Singing

“Yo, if this piano's the cake then my words are the candles
Light it up, make a wish, and them angels will grant you”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

Project Windows
On Albums, Nastradamus (1999)

Angels, Light

“To approach Chopin, you have to separate him completely from Schumann. Schumann admired Chopin very much and saw him as friend, but - what only few people know - Chopin himself had much less interest in and esteem for Schumann. In detail: Schumann’s works follow on from a transitional period determined by the successors of Viennese Classicism, particularly Beethoven. Just as the sons of Bach espoused the ‘galant,’ ornamented style of their generation, so the pupils of Mozart and Beethoven - Hummel, Ries, Czerny, Moscheles - took pains to compensate for a thinner musical substance with increased instrumental brilliance and thus prepared the ground for the golden age of the piano and the era of the Romantic virtuoso. Among the multitude of composers writing for the piano at that time, only two - Weber and Schubert - stand out as original creative forces.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Pain, People, Age, Music

“Herz, Thalberg, Heller, Felicien David and others were great virtuosos of their time, more famous than Chopin himself. They had their own personal styles, but the essence of their music was time-bound, nothing that could occupy generations after them. Chopin, in contrast, was someone special, someone who was completely different from all other artists, composers, and pianists. So too with his style. As a result, the aesthetic in approaching Chopin is distinctive: interpreting his music is the most difficult of all. For me personally, it’s the crowning of playing piano. Bach, Mozart, Chopin: these are the three who definitely created musical art in an all-embracing and overwhelming way.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Art, Music, Way, Time

“Because of the limited keyboard. This is a very strange thing. When I play the piano, I get clear down to the left edge of the piano. Now, unlike Art Tatum, I don't take runs that go up, that always end up on the extreme high "C". But I really do like the low end. Even as an organist, it has bothered me that the keyboards are five octaves and stop at "C". I've always wished that my pedal board went down to "F". My harmonic thinking gets involved clear down to that "F" and to be cut off at the "C". I can't explain it. It's as if somebody were standing right next to you while you were playing and you just kept having the feeling like: "I can't go there; I can't go there."”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

It does something to me. Whereby [sic] having the full keyboard just opens up a world of things to me. <br class="br">On his preference for Yamaha's 88-key PF-15 piano over the then prevalent DX7; radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT457&dq=%22because+of+the+limited+keyboard%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjOhaCoxMXRAhXB5iYKHcvbBykQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false (1992, 2006, 2014)

World, Art, Feeling, Thinking

“I'm trained quite classically but quite freely by my mum, so even when I was little, I had this rather freewheeling approach. When I trained more seriously in my late teens at college, it was: here are the notes, here is what is expected of you. I didn't mind because you need technique, particularly on the piano, which requires a lot of stamina. And it was natural that once I had done that, I would want to go beyond classical music. How can you be yourself if all you do is reproduce someone else's notes?”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Guardian - 05/10/2001
Childhood

Music, Nature, Training

“The hotel wasn't that empty, however. Soon an old man walked unsteadily out of the nearby lounge and plopped himself into a big easy chair beside the piano. There, he slowly sipped his wine and watched me play. I felt distracted and uneasy, trapped on the bench where at any moment he might request one of his favourite tunes, one I most likely did not know how to play. […] He said me: Who will play your music if you don't do it yourself?”

Michael Jones

Michael Jones (1995) Creating an Imaginative Life. Excerpts http://www.pianoscapes.com/pdfs/WhoWillPlayYourMusic.pdf at pianoscapes.com

Music, Wine

“These are the sort of things that push you on in music — the curiosity, a passion for new ideas. It's important to keep restoring that, and at the same time, hold on to the core things about music that whenever you pick the simplest form of instrument; guitar or piano, you can find a song that's worthwhile.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

dig interview (2004)

Music, Idea, Passion, Time

“The first piano was built long after they didn't have any at all.”

Victor Borge (1909–2000) Danish and US-American comedian and musician

From his skit "History of Pianos" in The Best of Victor Borge
Quotations from Borge's performances

“The atom can't be seen, yet its existence can be proved. And it is simple to prove that it can't ever be seen. It has to be studied by indirect evidence — and the technical difficulty has been compared to asking a man who has never seen a piano to describe a piano from the sound it would make falling downstairs in the dark.”

Carl David Anderson (1905–1991) American scientist

As quoted in Carl Anderson. Some notes about his life and work at Caltech. The first of a series of biographical sketches of Caltech faculty members. Engineering and Science, Vol. 15:1 (October 1951) http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechES:15.1.0

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