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When Zinka Milanov was teaching after her retirement from the stage, a young prospective student, who was a soprano, came to her and told her that she wanted to sing exactly like Milanov. Mme Milanov replied, "Don't be silly. Then there would be two of us!" Gregory Freeze (contributed by Douglas Hogge)

Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs. Albert Einstein

Again and again, step by step, intuition opens the door.

R. Buckminster Fuller

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Henry David Thoreau

The primary imagination I hold to be the living power.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel. Piet Mondrian

It is the creative potential itself in the human beings that is the image of God. Mary Daly

Creativity is harnessing universality and making it flow through your eyes. Peter Koestenbaum

Why should we all use our creative power...? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.

Brenda Ueland

The purpose of art is not a rarified, intellectual distillate --- it is life, intensified, brilliant life.

Alain Arias-Misson

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness--I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

Aaron Copland

During [these] periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight. Fritjof Capra, Physicist.

Always leave enough time in your life to do something that makes you happy, satisfied, even joyous. That has more of an effect on economic well-being than any other single factor.

Paul Hawken

I don't have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It's what you do with it that counts. Martin Ritt

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Albert Einstein

Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased. J. Krishnamurti

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Francis Bacon

The function of the creative artist consists of making laws, not in following laws already made.

Ferruccio Busoni

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between her work and her play, her labor and her leisure, her mind and her body, her education and her recreation. She hardly knows which is which. She simply pursues her vision of excellence through whatever she is doing and leaves others to determine whether she is working or playing. To herself she always seems to be doing both. Anon.

To believe in your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men-----that is genius.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Artists are the antennae of the race.

Ezra Pound

You must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don't let that concern you. It's your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite steadily, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures. Anton Chekov

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration. If inspiration is not discernable at the beginning.

Igor Stravinsky

Nothing is accomplished without enthusiasm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talent is a question of quantity. Talent does not write one page: it writes three hundred. Jules Reynard

I have never believed that my limitations were in any sense punishments or accidents. If I had held such a view, I could never have expected the strength to overcome them.

Helen Keller

Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Gustave Flaubert

I know writers who write only when the inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy.

Madeleine L'Engle

If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it.

H.G. Wells.

Only he who does nothing makes a mistake.

French Proverb

The qualities that make a true artist [are] nearly the same qualities that make a true athlete. John Gardner

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

William Blake

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Albert Einstein

"Yes," I said, suddenly becoming serious. "I am very lucky, but I have a little theory about this. I have noticed through experience and through my own observations that Providence, nature, God, or what I would call the Power of Creation seems to favor human beings who accept and love life unconditionally. And I am certainly one who does, with all my heart. So I have discovered ass a result of what I can only call miracles that whenever my inner self desires something subconsciously, life will somehow grant it to me." Arthur Rubinstein

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common that unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. Anon.

Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Samuel Beckett

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it: Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

E. H. Murray.

In a production of Boris Gudunof at Covent Garden shortly after World War 2, bass Michael Langdon was assigned the part of a grotesquely crippled peasant in the Revolution scene, a complex surge of choristers and small principals. The producer Peter Brook had no time to give detailed instructions. "Can you crawl on," he asked Langdon, "using perhaps your left elbow and your right knee?" This was all Langdon had to work with. He threw himself into it, nonetheless, dragging and heaving about the dusty stage while trying to avoid the other singers' feet. After a bit Langdon found himself utterly lost in the vicinity of a rock upon which was mounted an imperious contralto singing "Death to Boris!" Thinking he might trouble her for further instructions on the playing of the scene, Langdon tugged at her skirt. Whereupon she immediately hefted a great big stick and whacked him on the head.

Hilde Konetzni, a sizable woman, was singing Chrysothemis in Strauss's Elektra with Beecham in London in 1938. She was unsure of her entry at the line, "Kinder will ich haben bevor mein Leib verwelkt": I want to bear children before my body withers; and therefore moved closer to the conductor to discern his beat more easily. Seeing this hunk of soprano suddenly bearing down on him, Beecham called over his shoulder to Walter Legge and asked him what she was saying to him - she certainly seemed to be saying something.

"She wants you to be the father of her child," Legge translated.

"Send word to her," replied Beecham, still leading his men as he eyed Konetzni with bemusement, "that I'll reconsider her offer on some very cold winter's night."

Bing on Nilsson:

Is Nilsson difficult?

"Not at all," says Bing." You put enough money in and a glorious voice comes out."

Nilsson on Bing:

Nilsson's accountant, preparing her tax form for the IRS, asked her if she had any dependents.

"Yes," she said. "Rudolph Bing."

Modern medicine's most dramatic contribution to opera was surely that made in 1961 by a party of local medical students recruited to play the walk-on firing squad in the last act of Tosca at the San Francisco opera house....

The students, chosen for height rather than stage experience, knew nothing of the opera or it's plot, and the producer had little time to brief them. He wasn't worried because they didn't have to sing. Five minutes before the start of the dress rehearsal, he told them: "You're a firing squad. Just follow the officer. Slow march on in time to the music, line up, and when the officer lowers his sword, shoot."

"And how do we get off ?"

"Just wait on stage and, at the end, exit with the principals."

The dress rehearsal ran out of time and never reached the final scene, so, on the first night, the San Francisco audience saw Tosca end in an unusual way.

When, at the tragic denouement, the firing squad marched slowly on, it's members were momentarily confused by the fact that that there were both a man and a woman on stage. However, when Cavaradossi stepped bravely in front of them they decided he was the one they had to shoot. Yet as they lined up their sights they noticed he kept nodding in a conspiratorial way towards the woman. So, as the officer dropped his sword, they swung their rifles through 180 degrees and shot Tosca.

They were clearly discomforted when she remained standing and they heard Cavaradossi, now directly behind them, hit the stage as he dropped. They gawped nervously as Tosca rushed to him as if he were still alive, and then screamed. And they began to grow panicky when they heard the shouts off-stage and saw Tosca mount the battlements. Then, as she flung herself off, they remembered their final instruction. As the curtain slowly descended, they rushed upstage and threw themselves after her.

The great contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink was Czech by birth and German by musical training, but American by cultural adoption; she must have been one of the few public figures to have sons fighting on both sides in World War 1. Schumann-Heink was hefty, lovable, and a superb artist - but in this vignette, passed from buff to buff over the years, she is simply a woman with a German accent in that Great American Invention, the drugstore.

"I'd like some powder, please," she tells the clerk.

"Mennens ?"

"No. Vimmens."

"And would you like it scented ?"

"No, I'll take it vit me."

Strolling Paris with a friend, Rossini ran into Meyerbeer, who asked after his health. Rossini cited a string of calamities. Meyerbeer expressed all due dolor, and moved on; Rossini's friend then urged him to speed homeward to bed.

"My dear fellow, I feel perfectly fine," Rossini said. "But it so cheers our friend Meyerbeer to think that I'm at death's door that I hadn't the heart to disappoint him."

When Beecham didn't like a singer he could be quite callous in his manner, even in purely artistic situations. Frieda Hempel, one soprano Beecham didn't care for, was singing Pamina in Die Zauberflote under Sir Thomas and sent a deputy to inform him that she was not feeling her best. Would Sir Thomas transpose "Ach, ich fuhl's" for her? Sir Thomas agreed. Obviously she wanted it transposed down, so she wouldn't have to reach for the higher lines. But if the woman wants it transposed down, she should say she wants it transposed down.

Beecham told the orchestra to transpose it up.

Not long ago, a Met Aida offered two quite celebrated sopranos who were somewhat less than the best of friends. In the first scene of Act Two, wherein the Egyptian princess confronts the Ethiopian princess, rival to rival, there is a moment in which Aida falls to the floor in supplication to Amneris. When the moment came, those sitting in the first rows of the orchestra heard the Amneris whisper to the Aida, "On your knees, bitch !"

The two never shared a stage again.

In Adelina Patti's day, the more glamorous divas affected false eyebrows, shaving off the natural ones, and donning creations more suitable to greatness. Patti thought this rubbish; as Rossini said, opera was voice, voice, and more voice - not costume. One time, a rival prima donna was enjoying her false eyebrows, her claques ovations, and herself far too much for Patti's comfort. Patti started to stare at the upstarts face in a kind of fascinated horror.

"What's the matter?" the rival whispered.

"Your right eyebrow has fallen off!"

In dismay, the rival turned her back to the public and deftly removed her left eyebrow. In fact, there had been nothing wrong with the right one - and the rival played the rest of the act with part of her face missing.

Richard Tauber spent his twenties at the Dresden Opera, logging his experience and building up his repertory. Narraboth in Salome was one of his favourite parts, for the curtain is not long up before the officer kills himself - freeing the young tenor for a night out with his light of love instead of sending him home late (and exhausted), as Don Ottavio or Rodolpho did. Tauber used to tease the four men who played Herod's soldiers, for after they carried his corpse offstage, they had to march back on and stand at attention for the rest of the opera while Tauber went off partying.

One night they took revenge. As usual, Narraboth stabbed himself and fell, Herod made his entrance, saw the body, and ordered it taken away. Instead of carrying Tauber into the wings, the soldiers dumped him upstage, in full view of the audience. Tauber tried curses, pleas, and threats, but they left him there for the entire show.

Meyerbeer couldn't work; a street musician was playing a barrel organ in the street, just outside the window of Meyerbeer's study. Worse yet, he was grinding out nothing but Rossini. Aiming a servant at the disturbance, Meyerbeer offered two francs if the nuisance would go play somewhere else. No - wait! Oh, how droll of Meyerbeer, Meyerbeer thought : four francs - if the nuisance would go play Meyerbeer's tunes in front of Rossini's house!

A moment later the servant returned. " I'm sorry, Monsieur. The organ grinder says no."

"No? To four francs?"

"He says Rossini gave him eight francs - to play for you!"

Thomas Beecham programmed the Four Sea Interludes by Benjamin Britten at an Albert Hall concert. Near to him, a young man was following the music from the published score. Proud and gratified, Beecham felt that a few words of amity were indicated, and began with, "I see you're interested in Benjamin Britten."

"Of course I am."

That sounded nice. "Why 'of course'?" Beecham asked the stranger.

"Because I am Benjamin Britten."

Nonplussed, Beecham came out with "Oh, are you?" and there the encounter ended. Later he told the tale to a friend, who disturbed him greatly by remarking, "Maybe he was Benjamin Britten."

Two traditional tales of audience participation in a regrettable performance have best been rendered by raconteur Walter Slezak, who places both in a Pagliacci in Naples. The first episode finds the baritone delivering a questionable Prologue; anyway, this audience questions it, with jeers and yells.

"Perche fischiate a me?" the singer responds. "Aspettate il tenore!"

Why whistle at me? Wait till you hear the tenor!

Then comes the poor soprano, who makes a rough job of the Ballatella, after which, astonishingly, comes cries of bis! - the demand for an encore. She grants the repeat, no less unevenly than the first time, and still the gallery screams for an encore while those downstairs protest in horror. "Bis!" screams the gallery. "Basta!" cries the orchestra: Enough! At last a lone voice calls out from upstairs, "Deve cantarla fina che non lo cocnosce!": She'll sing it till she gets it right !

Francesa Cuzzoni, they say, was sometimes difficult for the sport of it; but Handel was tougher. One day, Cuzzoni announced that she didn't like a certain piece Handel had just played for her.

"I would like a fresh air to sing," she haughtily told him. "That one doesn't suit me, if you please!"

Handel flew at her in a rage, shouting, "I alvays knew you vere a fery tevil. But I shall now let you know zat I am Beelzebup, zez prince of de tevils! You vant fresh air! I giff you some fresh air!"

He then dragged Cuzzoni to an open window and was about to heave her into the street when she suddenly decided that she'd be thrilled to sing that delightful little aria after all.

The Emperor of Austria-Hungary, Joseph II, supported Mozart's belief that German lands needed German opera, but wondered if Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail was the breakthrough work the culture needed. Joseph found it a little too fancy, too highly developed. He told Mozart, "There are too many notes in it."

"Just as many, Your Majesty," Mozart replied, "as there should be."

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber was one of those composers who outraged Rossini by rising to fame in post-Tell Paris on a wave of twice-told tunes and situations. Still, Rossini retained his sense of humour. Attending Auber's latest opera comique, Rossini kept saluting every time a major tune was heard, and at last a companion asked what he was up to.

"Oh," said Rossini. "It's nothing, really. I'm just greeting old friends."

A Great Critic visited Verdi as he was putting the finishing touches on Il Travatore.

"What do you think of this?" Verdi asked him, playing the Anvil Chorus.

"Trash," announced the Great Critic, for he loved only the finest things.

"Now try this," said Verdi, offering the Miserere.

"What rubbish!" the Great Critic observed, for his nuanced sensibility could accept only the most profound art.

"One last test," said Verdi. He presented the tenor's aria, 'Di quella pira'.

"It's beastly," noted the Great Critic, for anything less than nobility made him shudder.

Verdi rose from the piano and embraced the Great Critic in momentous joy.

"What is the meaning of this?" asked the Great Critic.

"My dear friend," Verdi told him, "I have been writing a popular opera - an opera for the public, not for purists and classicists and solemn judges, like you. If you liked this music, no one else would. But your distaste assures me of success. In three months, Il Trovatore will be sung, whistled, and played all over Italy!"

During one of his occasional wars with Toscanini, Puccini forgot to strike the conductor's name from the Puccini's Christmas pannetone (fruit-cake) list. Realizing his error, he wired Toscanini: PANNETONE SENT BY MISTAKE PUCCINI. Came the answer: PANNETONE EATEN BY MISTAKE TOSCANINI.

Like Beecham, Knappertsbusch, and some other giants of the podium, Richard Strauss was not a dedicated rehearser. He would often disconcert orchestras by reading through on of his own works - even the most complex - without a stop and without comment. In England on a guest jaunt, he rehearsed in exactly this way, and, to his players' bewilderment, said nothing afterward, either.

Finally the concertmaster approached to ask, "Maestro, is there anything you would like to suggest to us?"

Strauss considered this. "Yes," he replied. "Bar 336, violins: up bow."

Madame Henriette Meric-Lalande, singing Donna Anna, was uneasy at her Don Ottavio's habit of throwing off phlegm when he sang - especially as she was wearing her own costly gown rather than theatre trunk material. Anxiety over her costume threatened to ruin her performance, until at last, during the Mask Trio, she whispered to him, "Voyons, mon cher ami, ne pourriez-vous pas, une foi par hasard, cracher sur la robe de Donna Elvira?" : My dear friend, do you suppose you could spit on Donna Elvira for a while?"

An overweight Giovanni became stuck in the trapdoor on his way to the nether regions in the banquet scene. Though he squirmed and ooched and puffed at the galop, he could not squeeze through. Nor, by then, could he pull himself up. He was trapped at the waist, neatly and permanently.

"Hurrah, boys!" cried a voice from the gallery. "Hells full!"

Here is a story about the composer Anton Rubinstein who is not to be confounded with the pianist Arthur. Anton played the piano very well and one day he decided to give a concert with the great violinist Leopold Auer. During the rehearsal Leopold Auer said to Rubinstein: "Please, don't play so loud, I can't hear me." Rubinstein looked at him and answered: "Well, you are very lucky."

Karajan, Furtwaengler and Boehm sit together and talk. "Yes, my friends, it's quite clear, I am the best conductor" Furtwaengler says. "Wait a minute" Boehm replies. "Yesterday I had a dream. God pointed at me and said: "You are the best conductor of all times". Karajan then says: "I beg your pardon but I never said that".

The conductor Artur Nikisch was rehearsing a symphonic concert meant to take place in a town in England. Beethoven's "Leonora 3" overture was on the programme. Everything was working well but here came the famous wings trumpet-call and, at the maestro's amazement, a deep silence replaced the expected veiled burst. What's going on? Nikisch left his music stand like a mad man, rushed behind the scenery and there saw he stage manager fighting with a trumpeter and telling him: "You, fool, can't you hear they are rehearsing on the stage?"

On the occasion of the "premiere" of Siegfried one of the singers was to sing in the "teatro communale" for the first time and was scared. Short before the curtain was raised, maestro Toscanini walked in front of him, morose and wrinkling as usual. "Good evening, Maestro" said the singer greeting him. "How will it do?" "Well!" Toscanini answered, "I don't really know. There are too many animals in this opera. There are the birds, the dragon, the bear and there's... you! " And he quickly headed toward the orchestra.

The director of the Metropolitan opera of New York, Sir Rudolf Bing, once exclaimed when seeing the fee that Maria Callas was asking to sing at the Met: "Why, even the President of the United States doesn't receive so much money in one year". To what the soprano retorted: "Then let him sing for you".

Patti was a fantastic singer and a master in the art of obtaining from a manager the greatest amount of money he could possibly continue to pay her. Mrs Patti had a parrot which she took with her every time she was touring America. It had been taught by Nicolini, the singer's second husband, to cry "Cash! cash!" whenever the impresario appeared.

The Czech tenor Leo Slezak had just finished singing his "Farewell" in "Lohengrin". He walked towards the boat drawn by a swan but the backstage staff made it move away too fast and he was unable to board it. Slezak strolled towards the audience and with a wonderful presence of mind asked: "Tell me, please, what time is the next swan?"

The great French guitarist Alewandre Lagoya was walking along in Paris. A woman, convinced that she had recognised him said: "Good morning Mr.Brassens" (a famous French singer ). Lagoya answered the lady: "I'm sorry Madam, my name is Lagoya" and the lady replied: "How funny. You have the same name as the guitarist".

The famous German conductor Otto Klemperer who was making records for the Vox company was complaining to its director George Mendelssohn, a descendant of the composer, that he could not find any of his - "That can't be" - Mendelssohn answered. - "I will take you to the biggest record shop downtown and you'll see by yourself". They both arrive at the shop. Klemperer asked a shop girl Beethoven's 5th symphony conducted by Klemperer. The shop girl looked at the records and said: "I am sorry. I have it by Toscanini, by Walter, by Furtwaengler but not by Klemperer". Then Klemperer turned toward Mendelssohn and shouted: "You see, I never can find any of my records in the shops and it is the same thing everywhere in the world". He turned toward the shop girl again and said: "You are stupid, you must have records by Klemperer, they are wonderful records and I am Klemperer myself". Then the shop girl thinking she was dealing with someone more or less insane said to him: "Oh yes, and your friend must be Beethoven". Klemperer shouted: "No, you are stupid. He is Mendelssohn".

A reviewer, as arrogant as little connoisseur, wrote naughty lines about the composer Max Reger. The latter replied by letter: "I am in a charming little rest room and I am holding your article in front of me. It will soon be behind me"

In order to assess their suitability for adopting a Vietnamese orphan, a Miss Taylor, who had run a Sa�gon orphanage, stayed with the Previn family for a week-end. At breakfast on the first morning, she asked if she might have a bowl of cereal. Eager to please, Previn reached for the health - food cereal that his two small sons consumed with delight every morning and poured Miss Taylor a generous bowlful. While she ate, he held forth on the nutritional value of the cereal. Miss Taylor made no reply, however, until her bowl was empty. - "To be quite honest", she admitted, - "I'm not crazy about it". Previn's glance happened to fall on the jar from which he had served Miss Taylor. "I'm not surprised", he said slowly, "I've just made you eat a large dish of hamster food".

The Capet quartet, one of the most famous in the world, was on a tour in Switzerland. It was its first important tour and, as it stopped in Bern on the occasion of a concert, it was invited to a big reception given in its honour at the French embassy. Of course, it was asked to play some music. At the end of the reception, after having listened to an excerpt of a quartet by Beethoven, the ambassador's wife approached the quartet with a small envelope in her hand and gave it to Capet saying: "Here's to you, Maestro. It will help to increase your little orchestra."

In the Unter der Linden avenue in Berlin, Hans von B�low meets a very boring lady whom he is used to avoiding. She gets close to him and smirks: "Good morning, Maestro. I bet that you did not recognise me." Hans von B�low looks at her from head to toe and says: - " You win, Madam!"

George Gershwin decided to take some orchestration coaching with Maurice Ravel. Taking advantage of Ravel being in New York, Gershwin goes to see him and asks him to give him orchestration lessons on his own works. Ravel surprised asks him: "How much money do you earn each year?" Gershwin replies: "About 200,000 dollars." Ravel tells him: - "In this case, I think it would be better that I took lessons from you."

A cello teacher asks his young pupil to play a piece of her own choice to test her talent. The young girl tells him: "I will play the "Swan" from Saint-Sa�ns "Le Carnaval des Animaux" and she begins to play. At the end of the piece she asks the teacher: "Well, what do you think of it?" to which the teacher sadly replies: - "Poor beast!".

Sir Thomas Beecham was travelling in a non-smoking compartment on a train belonging to the Great Western Railway. A lady entered the compartment and lit a cigarette, saying, "I'm sure you won't object if I smoke." "Not at all", replied Beecham - "provided that you don't object if I'm sick." "I don't think you know who I am," the lady haughtily pointed out. "I'm one of the directors' wives." "Madam," said Beecham, - "if you were the director's only wife, I should still be sick"

As a celebrated composer, Brahms conducted his two piano concertos in Berlin and attended a dinner given for him. His host proposed a toast to "the most famous composer." Brahms, seeing what was coming, interposed hastily, - "Quite right: here's to Mozart!" and clinked glasses all round. A great wine connoisseur invited Brahms to dinner and in his honour brought out some of his choicest bottles. - "This is the Brahms of my cellar", he announced to the company as wine from a venerable bottle was poured into the composer's glass. Brahms scrutinised the wine closely, inhaled its bouquet, took a sip, and then put down his glass without comment. - "How do you like it?" anxiously asked the host. "Better bring out your Beethoven," murmured Brahms.

In the 1950s the Venice Festival commissioned Stravinsky to write an original composition. When the piece was submitted, its length (only fifteen minutes) was found unsatisfactory. Stravinsky was unruffled. "Well, then," he said, "play it again."

The great tenor Francesco Tamagno was very famous for his powerful voice. Though he made a lot of money, he was extremely mean. Once, after dessert at a dinner in NY, he took a bag from his pocket and proceeded to fill it with almonds, chocolates and some orchids from the table. He explained to the Italian ambassador's wife that he wished to take a little gift to his daughter who was sick. Some days later he and Nellie Melba were invited to lunch in a restaurant. After the main dish, Tamagno asked the waiter a newspaper. Once he had it he wrapped the veal cutlet that the prima donna had not eaten saying: "My dog, he love cotoletta alla milanese." Next morning, Mancinelli, the conductor who had invited Tamagno and Melba came unexpectedly to visit Tamagno at his hotel. It was twelve o'clock and the tenor and his wife were eating a sort of picnic lunch in their bedroom. As you probably have already guessed, they were feasting on the "cotoletta alla milanese."

Once Saint-Sa�ns accepted to listen to a singer who was rather an "amateur" but a lady! Before she began to sing a melody by the composer himself, she said to him, smirking: - "O maestro, you know, I am shivering, I am so scared!" Saint-Saens looked at her and answered: "Not as much as I am myself, Madam."

In Vienna, Moskowsky is walking along with his friend Glazunov. They pass in front of Schubert's house on which Glazunov notices a memorial plaque. He asks Moskowsky: "Do you think that when I die they will also put a plaque on my house?" "But of course" Moskowsky answers. "And what will they write on it?" "Oh, just House to rent."

At the end of a diner he was attending by a lady in Liege, Eugene Ysaye was asked to listen to a young violinist. Although he felt tired and was longing to go back home he could but accept his hostess' request. The young man played several pieces from his repertoire. Then, after a long while, everybody was waiting for the maestro's sentence. "What do you think of his execution?" asked the delicious hostess to Ysaye. "Oh, dear Madam, I must confess that he reminds me Paderewsky." "But Maestro, Paderewsky doesn't play the violin!!!" "Well Madam, neither does he."

Debussy had just finished rehearsing the first movement of his new orchestral piece "La Mer" called "From dawn to midday at sea". He noticed that his fellow composer Erik Satie was seated in the rows, went up to him and asked: "What did you think of it?" Satie who was a very humorous man answered him: "I liked especially the bit around a quarter to eleven."

Mischa Elman was attending Jascha Heifetz's debut at Carnegie Hall in New York. He went to this concert with his friend Godowsky. During the interval Elman turned towards Godowsky and said: - "Hey, don't you think it's hot around here?". And Godowsky answered, smiling: "No, not for a pianist."

Sir Thomas Beecham was once asked if he had heard any Stockhausen. "No," he is said to have replied, "but I believe I have trodden in some."

J. B. Morton's definition of a prodigy: 'A child who plays the piano when he ought to be asleep in bed.'

'Too many pieces (of music) finish too long after the end' - Igor Stravinsky

'Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism' - Howard Dietz

'Three farts and a raspberry orchestrated.' Sir John Barbirolli on modern music

'Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands - and all you can do is scratch it.' - attributed to Sir Thomas Beecham

'What is a harp but an over-sized cheese-slicer with cultural pretensions?' - Denis Norden

'Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.' - S.T. Coleridge

Franz Liszt had a stock reply for young woman who asked 'Maestro, do you think I have a good voice?' 'Ah my dear.' Liszt would reply, 'good is not the word for it!'

Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. - Confucius

Music will express any emotion, base or lofty, she is absolutely immoral - George Bernard Shaw

All one's life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time - John Ruskin

Ah music! What a beautiful art! But what a difficult profession! -
Georges Bizet

Do not take up music unless you would rather die than not do so. -
Nadia Boulanger

The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all. -
Pablo Casals

The Opera (Magic Flute) is the only one.....that might conceivably have been composed by God - Neville Cardus

If I don't practise for one day, I know it; if I don't practise for two days, the critics know it; if I don't practise for three days the audience knows it. - Ignacy Jan Paderewski

'Artists who say they practise eight hours a day are liars or asses' - Andres Segovia

'The Detroit Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost.' - ANON critic

It is much easier to play a thing quickly than to play it slowly. - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Definition of a true musician: when he hears a lady singing in the bath - he puts his ear to the keyhole!

'You are a prince because you were born a prince - I am a great musician because I have struggled and strived and worked my socks off all my life! There are lots of princes........there is only one Ludwig Van Beethoven!' (He had a point - didn't he?)

Schumann on Wagner - 'For me Wagner is impossible....he talks without ever stopping. One just can't talk all the time.'

Wagner on Schumann - 'It is impossible to communicate with Schumann. The man is hopeless; he does not talk at all.'

'If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.' - Oscar Wilde

Weber on Beethoven's 7th Symphony - 'The extravagances of Beethoven's genius have reached the ne plus ultra in the seventh symphony, and he is quite ripe for the madhouse.'

"Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together."- Mel Brooks

My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a producer." - Cole Porter

"I write [music] as a sow piddles." - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Don't bother to look, I've composed all this already." - Gustav Mahler, to Bruno Walter who had stopped to admire mountain scenery in rural Austria.

"I would rather play Chiquita Banana and have my swimming pool than play Bach and starve." - Xavier Cugat

"[Musicians] talk of nothing but money and jobs. Give me businessmen every time. They really are interested in music and art." - Jean Sibelius, explaining why he rarely invited musicians to his home.

"The amount of money one needs is terrifying..." - Ludwig van Beethoven

"Only become a musician if there is absolutely no other way you can make a living." - Kirke Mecham, on his life as a composer

"There is nothing more difficult than talking about music." - Camille Saint-Saens

"I am not handsome, but when women hear me play, they come crawling to my feet." - Niccolo Paganini

"Of course I'm ambitious. What's wrong with that? Otherwise you sleep all day." - Ringo Starr

"What is the voice of song, when the world lacks the ear of taste?" - Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Flint must be an extremely wealthy town: I see that each of you bought two or three seats." - Victor Borge, playing to a half-filled house in Flint, Michigan.

"Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years." - William F. Buckley, Jnr.

"You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh and go slow." - Oscar Levant, explaining his way out of a speeding ticket.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds." - Mark Twain

"I love Beethoven, especially the poems." - Ringo Starr

"If a young man at the age of twenty-three can write a symphony like that, in five years he will be ready to commit murder." - Walter Damrosch on Aaron Copland

There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major." - Sergei Prokofiev

"I never use a score when conducting my orchestra... Does a lion tamer enter a cage with a book on how to tame a lion?"- Dimitri Mitropolous

"God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way." - Arturo Toscanini, to a trumpet player

"Already too loud!" - Bruno Walter at his first rehearsal with an American orchestra, on seeing the players reaching for their instruments.

I really don't know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris, or whether you can find more asses and virtuosos anywhere." - Frederic Chopin

"When she started to play, Steinway himself came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano." - Bob Hope, on comedienne Phyllis Diller

"Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them." - Richard Strauss

"In opera, there is always too much singing." - Claude Debussy

"An exotic and irrational entertainment." - Samuel Johnson's definition of opera

"If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it." - Pierre Beaumarchais

"Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings." - Robert Benchley

"I'd hate this to get out, but I really like opera." - Ford Frick (Commissioner of Baseball)

" ponderous orchestral absurdity." - Frank Zappa on his rock symphony debuted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic

"Movie music is noise. It's even more painful than my sciatica." - Sir Thomas Beecham

"I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse." - Bing Crosby

"Theirs [the Beatles] is a happy, cocky, belligerently resource-less brand of harmonic primitivism... In the Liverpudlian repertoire, the indulgent amateurishness of the musical material, though closely rivalled by the indifference of the performing style, is actually surpassed only by the ineptitude of the studio production method. (Strawberry Fields suggests a chance encounter at a mountain wedding between Claudio Monteverdi and a jug band.)" - Glenn Gould

The accompanist Gerald Moore tells of a certain bass he once accompanied - or tried to. Finding Schubert's Der Einsame too high in the key of F and too low in the key of E, the singer then asked Moore if he had 'nothing in between'.

When asked why he doesn't sing in the bath, Luciano Pavarotti replied: 'Are you making a joke? Singing is work.'

'This fault is common to all singers: when their friends ask them to sing, they are unwilling, but when they are unasked they will never leave off.' - Horace

"The only place a modern composer can hear his music twice" - Sir Thomas Beecham on the echo of The Royal Albert Hall

'How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.' - Gioachino Rossini

'Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings.' - Ed Gardner, American broadcaster

'Sleep is an excellent way of listening to opera' - James Stephens

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul - Plato

Music is the meditation " between the intellectual and the sensuous life." Magical music never leaves the memory.
Ludwig van Beethoven

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