Arnold Schoenberg quotes

Although our "gentle air" cannot improve the way hate and envy look, it does seem not to encourage firmness and decision. All is compromise; caution and refinement are everywhere. Everything has to "make a good impression" - whether or not it is any good: the impression is the main thing. (Arnold Schoenberg)
My music is not modern, it is merely badly played. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
My work should be judged as it enters the ears and heads of listeners, not as it is described to the eyes of readers. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
My music is not lovely. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
I have never seen faces, but because I have looked people in the eye, only their gazes. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
There are no more geniuses, only critics. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
I was never revolutionary. The only revolutionary in our time was Strauss! View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
...if it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
Market value is irrelevant to intrinsic value. ... Unqualified judgment can at most claim to decide the market-value - a value that can be in inverse proportion to the intrinsic value. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
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." View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
An artistic impression is substantially the resultant of two components. One what the work of art gives the onlooker - the other, what he is capable of giving to the work of art. (Arnold Schoenberg)
If music is frozen architecture, then the potpourri is frozen coffee-table gossip... Potpourri is the art of adding apples to pears... View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
I owe very, very much to Mozart; and if one studies, for instance, the way in which I write for string quartet, then one cannot deny that I have learned this directly from Mozart. And I am proud of it! View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
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. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
There is a great Man living in this country - a composer. He has solved the problem how to preserve one's self and to learn. He responds to negligence by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
I have just read your book [On the Spiritual in Art] from cover to cover, and I will read it once more. I find it pleasing to an extraordinary degree, because we agree on nearly all of the main issues.. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
I am delighted to add another unplayable work to the repertoire. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
Hauer looks for laws. Good. But he looks for them where he will not find them. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
Now we will throw these mediocre kitsch-mongers into slavery, and teach them to venerate the German spirit and to worship the German God. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I don't know whether this is the cause why I did it in music and also why I did it in painting. Or vice versa: That I had this way as an outlet. I could renounce expressing something in words. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
"My works are 12-tone compositions, not 12-tone compositions. (Arnold Schoenberg)
I see the work as a whole first. Then I compose the details. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg
I see the work as a whole first. Then I compose the details. In working out, I always lose something. This cannot be avoided. There is always some loss when we materialize. But there is compensating gain in vitality. View quote
Arnold Schoenberg