Music-a few little quotation's to amuse you...
Posted by: Voltaire on 03 March 2007
quote:The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No.'
Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990)
quote:After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963), "Music at Night", 1931
quote:An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.
Dan Rather (1931 - )
quote:But then there's a moment like tonight, a profound and transcendent experience, the feeling as if a door has opened, and it's all because of that instrument, that incredible, magical instrument.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Mite Makes Right, 1994
quote:Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.
Ed Gardner
quote:Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
Edgar Wilson Nye (1850 - 1896), quoted in Mark Twain's Autobiography, 1924
quote:My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell (1887 - 1964)
quote:I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
Elvis Presley (1935 - 1977)
Posted on: 03 March 2007 by Voltaire
I am afraid that I have to disgree with one of my hero's, Mr Huxley and instead side with Shelley (Percy, not Mary)...
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
Posted on: 03 March 2007 by Haim Ronen
Voltaire,
Thanks for all the quotes. I like Aldous Huxely's best.
For me, the music I love is the one with ummeasurable frequencies and time duration.
It goes far beyond my hearing senses and stays with me well after the machine stopped playing it.
Haim
Thanks for all the quotes. I like Aldous Huxely's best.
For me, the music I love is the one with ummeasurable frequencies and time duration.
It goes far beyond my hearing senses and stays with me well after the machine stopped playing it.
Haim
Posted on: 03 March 2007 by Gianluigi Mazzorana
"There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another".
Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Posted on: 03 March 2007 by Gianluigi Mazzorana
"If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.
I never talk when there's music, if it is good.
If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation"
Oscar Wilde
I never talk when there's music, if it is good.
If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation"
Oscar Wilde
Posted on: 03 March 2007 by jayd
You know, we just buy music now. We don't make it any more. And that goes for just about everything. I think it's so important that people develop and subscribe to and have confidence in their own ability to make music, however rough it is.
- Tom Waits
Every man knows he is a sissy compared to Johnny Cash.
- Bono
One night I was sitting listening to some Hank Williams songs - and they'll change your life in a hurry...
- Charles M. Schulz
Music is music. Bach or the fat guy playing "Oh Susanna" on his armpit at the block party every July fourth, it's all the same basic language.
- Pat Costello
The last thing that the blues needs is another smart-ass white boy with an attitude.
- Brownie McGhee
The banjo is the swiss army knife of the darkside.
- source unknown
Nothing says 'dropping out of society' like learning the banjo.
- Daniel Roth
If I made records for my own pleasure, I would only record Charley Patton songs.
- Bob Dylan
Music should never be harmless.
- Robbie Robertson
...and, my favorite:
You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
- Frank Zappa
- Tom Waits
Every man knows he is a sissy compared to Johnny Cash.
- Bono
One night I was sitting listening to some Hank Williams songs - and they'll change your life in a hurry...
- Charles M. Schulz
Music is music. Bach or the fat guy playing "Oh Susanna" on his armpit at the block party every July fourth, it's all the same basic language.
- Pat Costello
The last thing that the blues needs is another smart-ass white boy with an attitude.
- Brownie McGhee
The banjo is the swiss army knife of the darkside.
- source unknown
Nothing says 'dropping out of society' like learning the banjo.
- Daniel Roth
If I made records for my own pleasure, I would only record Charley Patton songs.
- Bob Dylan
Music should never be harmless.
- Robbie Robertson
...and, my favorite:
You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
- Frank Zappa
Posted on: 04 March 2007 by Guido Fawkes
quote:If music be the food of love are you the indigestion?
Nigel Blackwell quoting a man in a club's opinion of his music in (Me and My Girl) Sealclubbing
Posted on: 04 March 2007 by Guido Fawkes
quote:You may think that's bizarre, uncouth or obscene, whereas I think there's got to be an album in there somewhere
Frank Zappa
Posted on: 06 March 2007 by JamH
John Cage [I paraphrase from memory] ...
"Let's not argue if what I do is music or not music .. let's ask if it is any good"
Sorabji [again from memory and paraphared] ...
"Do not call music immortal until it is as old as architecture .. the pyramids are 4000 years old, Bach is just 400"
Talking Heads
"I was born in a house with the television always on"
James H.
"Let's not argue if what I do is music or not music .. let's ask if it is any good"
Sorabji [again from memory and paraphared] ...
"Do not call music immortal until it is as old as architecture .. the pyramids are 4000 years old, Bach is just 400"
Talking Heads
"I was born in a house with the television always on"
James H.
Posted on: 06 March 2007 by u5227470736789439
Sir Thomas Beecham on JS Bach, whom most here will realise I love the most of all in music!
" Too much counterpoint, and at that, Protestant counterpoint!"
On Beethoven's Seventh, he said,
" Like a lot of jumping Yaks! What can you do with it?"
Of Elgar's First Symphony he said,
"The Saint Pancras Station of symphonies. I play all the repeats, at the composer's insistence!" [There are no repeats, of course, in this symphony!].
Elgar said of Brahms,
"That old bore. When he gets excited he scores for the triangle as well..."
Kindest regards from Fredrik
" Too much counterpoint, and at that, Protestant counterpoint!"
On Beethoven's Seventh, he said,
" Like a lot of jumping Yaks! What can you do with it?"
Of Elgar's First Symphony he said,
"The Saint Pancras Station of symphonies. I play all the repeats, at the composer's insistence!" [There are no repeats, of course, in this symphony!].
Elgar said of Brahms,
"That old bore. When he gets excited he scores for the triangle as well..."
Kindest regards from Fredrik
Posted on: 06 March 2007 by u5227470736789439
"You will never make a fortune out of Beethoven!"
... by my father, who seemed to think that the only music worth listening to came on Capital LPs with Frank Sinatra printed on the label!
Fredrik
PS: Of course my interest, as a child, in Beethoven had precisely nothing to do with money!
... by my father, who seemed to think that the only music worth listening to came on Capital LPs with Frank Sinatra printed on the label!
Fredrik
PS: Of course my interest, as a child, in Beethoven had precisely nothing to do with money!
Posted on: 07 March 2007 by Guido Fawkes
quote:Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
Sir Thomas Beecham on JS Bach, whom most here will realise I love the most of all in music!
Kindest regards from Fredrik
Dear Fredrik
Am I right in thinking it was Sir Thomas Beecham who said Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour.
I realise Oscar Wilde said of the same composer I like Wagner's music better than any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage.
Kind regards, Rotf
—
Posted on: 07 March 2007 by u5227470736789439
Yes I think that is right. Beecham was a wag, but also one of the best Wagnerians!
I have records of TB in the overtures to Tanhauser and Mastersingers, and both are wonderful - much better than any other performances I have come across. So alive and not in the least dull or over weight.
ATB from Fredrik
I have records of TB in the overtures to Tanhauser and Mastersingers, and both are wonderful - much better than any other performances I have come across. So alive and not in the least dull or over weight.
ATB from Fredrik
Posted on: 07 March 2007 by Geoff P
Annonymus Recording Engineer / Mixer:
"You can polish a turd as much as you like but all you get is a nice clean shiny turd!"
"You can polish a turd as much as you like but all you get is a nice clean shiny turd!"
Posted on: 09 March 2007 by JWM
Beecham to a lady cellist:
"Madam, between your legs you have God's gift to man, and all you can do is sit and scratch it."
"Madam, between your legs you have God's gift to man, and all you can do is sit and scratch it."
Posted on: 09 March 2007 by Guido Fawkes
Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny - Frank Zappa
Posted on: 09 March 2007 by u5227470736789439
quote:Originally posted by JWM:
Beecham to a lady cellist:
"Madam, between your legs you have God's gift to man, and all you can do is sit and scratch it."
Beecham's quotation is actually funnier than that:
Madam between you legs you have an organ capable pleasing thousands, and all you can do is scratch it...
ATB from Fredrik
The Cellist was a lady called Madame Suggia, who passed herself off as cassals wife among other things! She only worked with Beecham once!
Posted on: 09 March 2007 by Onthlam
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
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There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.
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I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
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Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
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Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
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Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour.
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Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
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Classical music is the kind that we keep hoping will turn into a tune.
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We consider that any man who can fiddle all through one of those Virginia Reels without losing his grip, may be depended upon in any kind of musical emergency.
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The Mandolin is the bottom four strings of the guitar, backwards...so a person with dyslexia has no problem learning to play the Mandolin.
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Do I listen to pop music because I'm miserable or am I miserable because listen to pop music?
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I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'
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It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.
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Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.
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Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.
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A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
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I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different.
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I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.
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I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is the language I don't understand.
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No opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not sing.
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Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding, sings.
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You know you're getting old when everything hurts. And what doesn't hurt doesn't work.
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I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.
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Last night at Carnegie Hall, Jack Benny played Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn lost.
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It is quite untrue that British people don't appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.
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The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.
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I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the manmade sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.
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Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.
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There are more bad musicians than there is bad music.
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Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?
More funny Igor Stravinsky quotes
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His music used to be original. Now it's aboriginal. [About Igor Stravinsky]
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Parsifal is the kind of opera that starts at six o'clock and after it has been running for three hours, you check your watch and it says 6:20.
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One can't judge Wagner's opera 'Lohengrin' after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend hearing it a second time.
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I once sent him a song and asked him to mark a cross wherever he thought it was faulty. Brahms returned it untouched, saying "I don't want to make a cemetery of your compositions."
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The piano is a monster that screams when you touch its teeth.
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I'd rather be a musician than a rock star.
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I like to think of us as Clearasil on the face of the nation. Jim Morrison would have said that if he was smart, but he's dead.
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If you wanted to torture me, you'd tie me down and force me to watch our first five videos.
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I'm not really a good singer. But most people aren't, either.
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If you can sell green toothpaste in this country, you can sell opera.
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There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead.
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Boys, look like you're having fun, but don't have any. (To his band just before going on the air)
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She has a nice voice, but she looks a little bit too much like Eleanor Roosevelt.
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Boys, if you don't stick together, how do you expect me to follow you-ah?
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I don't deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn't deserve that, either. So I'll keep it.
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Critics don't buy records. They get 'em free.
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I certainly hear the Trombones Unlimited version of 'Daydream' in a lot of elevators.
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The musicians that didn't know music could play the best blues. I know that I don't want no musicians who know all about music playin' for me.
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I'm glad there are a lot of guitar players pursuing technique as diligently as they possibly can, because it leaves this whole other area open to people like me.
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You're willing to pay him a thousand dollars a night just for singing? Why, you can get a phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher for 75 cents. And for a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie. (Night at the Opera)
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The soundtrack to 'Indecent Exposure' is a romantic mix of music that I know most women love to hear, so I never keep it far from me when women are nearby.
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Listen Edith, I know you're singing, you know you're singing, but the neighbors may think I'm torturing you. - Archie Bunker
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I love to sing, and I love to drink scotch. Most people would rather hear me drink scotch.
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All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song.
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Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
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Remember that I wrote a pavane for a dead princess, and not a dead pavane for a princess!
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You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.
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After I die I shall return to earth as the doorkeeper of a bordello and I won't let a one of you in.
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Assassins!
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God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way.
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He stole my music but he gave me my name. (on Mick Jagger)
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I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know.
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I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated.
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I've outdone anyone you can name - Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.
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When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don't go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.
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Some kids in Italy call me 'Mama Jazz; I thought that was so cute. As long as they don't call me 'Grandma Jazz.'
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A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside. . . I'm going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do.
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I know I'm no glamour girl, and it's not easy for me to get up in front of a crowd of people. It used to bother me a lot, but now I've got it figured out that God gave me this talent to use, so I just stand there and sing.
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I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.
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The only thing better than singing is more singing.
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The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.
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I liked the bit about quarter to eleven. (on Debussy's "Dawn to Noon on the Sea")
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Before I compose a piece, I walk around it several times, accompanied by myself.
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Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
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MTV is to music as KFC is to chicken!
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The opera is like a husband with a foreign title - expensive to support, hard to understand and therefore a supreme social challenge.
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Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
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If you would be singing like this two thousand years ago, people would have stoned you.
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If your lifeguard duties were as good as your singing, a lot of people would be drowning.
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My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
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Beware the lollipop of mediocrity; lick it once and you'll suck forever.
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The Prelude to [Wagner's] 'Tristan und Isolde' reminds one of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel.
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There's people making babies to my music. That's nice.
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You got to have smelt a lot of mule manure before you can sing like a hillbilly.
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Get up from that piano. You hurtin' its feelings.
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I want to write songs that are so sad, the kind of sad where you take someone's little finger and break it in three places.
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During the 'whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa's' in 'Combination Of the Two,' I couldn't help but go to the mirror and pretend I was a wild woman like Janis, in a rock band.
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You have Van Gogh's ear for music.
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I practice when I'm loaded.
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I like your opera. I think I will set it to music.
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The guitar's not all that expensive either, when you compare it to gettin' a tooth pulled or something.
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I always said that I'm not the best singer in the world, just the loudest.
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We did consider the name 'Beetles,' but Jerry [Allison] said, 'Aw, that's just a bug you'd want to step on,' so we immediately dropped that.
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I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.
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I'd love to see Christ come back to crush the spirit of hate and make men put down their guns. I'd also like just one more hit single.
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There'll always be some arrogant little brat who wants to make music with a guitar. Rock'n'roll will never die.
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I once told this writer a story about how I met the guys in an elevator and found out we all had the same last name, so we decided to form a band.
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On matters of intonation and technicalities I am more than a martinet—I am a martinetissimo.
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I only know two tunes. One is 'Yankee Doodle,' and the other isn't.
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A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.
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Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away.
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There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
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If an opera cannot be played by an organ grinder, it's not going to achieve immortality.
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Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.
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Playing 'Bop' is like Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
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I spent 15 minutes writing 'Stand by Your Man,' and a lifetime defending it.
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Basically, we put our songs together in very much the same way the guys in Metallica do.
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I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.
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A typical day in the life of a heavy metal musician consists of a round of golf and an AA meeting.
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John's just jealous because I'm the brains of the group. I've written all the songs, even from the beginning when I wasn't in the group.
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Never hate a song that's sold a half million copies.
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Personally, being somewhat envious of Richard's songwriting and guitar playing, it's somewhat satisfying he's not yet achieved household-name status. It serves him right for being so good. (on Richard Thompson)
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When an instrument fails on stage it mocks you and must be destroyed.
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These days, what isn't worth saying is sung.
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After Rossini dies, who will there be to promote his music?
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The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost.
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I always thought he sounded just like Yogi Bear. (on Bob Dylan)
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When she started to play, Steinway came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano.
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They should be shot. (on the Backstreet Boys)
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His Majesty does not know what the band has just played, but it is never to be played again. (on Richard Strauss' "Elektra")
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When I heard him, I thought, if he can do that and get away with it, I can do it too. (on Sonny Bono)
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In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of.
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Rodgers and Hammerstein, if you can imagine it taking two men to write one song. (when asked "Who wrote 'Some Enchanted Evening'?")
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It won't be long before we'll be writing together again. I just hope they have a decent piano up there.
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I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.
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When they called 'em rock'n'roll pioneers, they were talking about the music. But that pretty much described the living conditions, too.
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Do it again on the next verse, and people think you meant it.
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My dad taught me about music. He used to tap dance.
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For 15 years, we always thought we would last as long as our last record contract.
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It's ill-becoming for an old broad to sing about how bad she wants it. But occasionally we do.
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I once served a steak to Janis Joplin at Max's Kansas City. She was quiet and very polite. She didn't eat her steak but left a five dollar tip.
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A piano store looks like a funeral parlor for music.
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It's not music, it's a disease. (on rock'n'roll)
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I like Beethoven, especially the poems.
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I refuse to slap some stupid words on the stupid paper just so we have a stupid song finished.
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Olivia Newton-John—Australia's gift to insomniacs. It's nothing but the blonde singing the bland.
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I am a greedy, selfish bastard. I want the fact that I existed to mean something.
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Hits are for squares.
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I'd rather be dead than singing 'Satisfaction' when I'm forty-five.
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My present post amounts to about 700 thaler, and when there are rather more funerals than usual, the fees rise in proportion; but when a healthy wind blows, they fall accordingly...
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Composers shouldn't think too much—it interferes with their plagiarism.
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Someday we may have as many followers as the harpsichord.
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It is not impossible that the future belongs to this 'traumverwirrten Katzenjammerstil' (nightmarish hangover style), a future which we therefore do not envy. (on Bruckner)
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Even Bach comes down to the basic suck, blow, suck, suck, blow.
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Tipper and Al (Gore) came to a show the last time we were in Washington. They're nice people, a nice family. We made every effort not to frighten them.
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An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.
More funny Edith Wharton quotes
***
About as modest as Mussolini. (on Joni Mitchell)
More funny David Crosby quotes
***
A song without music is a lot like H2 without the O.
More funny Ira Gershwin quotes
***
My attitude these days is, if you write a bad song, what are they gonna do, throw you in songwriter jail?
More funny John Hiatt quotes
***
In opera, there is always too much singing.
More funny Claude Debussy quotes
***
To get your playing more forceful, hit the drums harder.
More funny Keith Moon quotes
***
I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
More funny Edgar Wilson Nye quotes
***
If I wasn't a musician, I would be a serial killer.
More funny GG Allin quotes
***
Traditionally, songwriters can't sing. And that holds true in my case, also.
More funny John Phillips quotes
***
Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.
More funny Lionel Hampton quotes
***
The world must be filled with unsuccessful musical careers like mine, and it's probably a good thing. We don't need a lot of bad musicians filling the air with unnecessary sounds. Some of the professionals are bad enough.
More funny Andy Rooney quotes
***
If I didn't do this well, I just wouldn't have anything to do...I can't cook, and I'd be a terrible housewife.
More funny Freddy Mercury quotes
***
For us the most important thing is to be visual, and for the cats watching us to have fun. This is all we want. We get very upset if people get bored when we're only half way through smashing the second set.
More funny Roger Waters quotes
***
I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.
More funny Woody Allen quotes
***
Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.
More funny Franz Liszt quotes
***
The privilege of directing this magnificent consort of artists is such that my pleasure would be diminished if I accepted a fee. I would, however, gladly accept a decent cigar.
More funny Thomas Beecham quotes
***
There are no women composers, never have been, and possibly never will be. (when asked why only male composers appeared in his repertoire)
More funny Thomas Beecham quotes
***
Too much counterpoint; what is worse, Protestant counterpoint. (of Johann Sebastian Bach)
More funny Thomas Beecham quotes
***
Beethoven’s last quartets were written by a deaf man and should only be listened to by a deaf man.
More funny Thomas Beecham quotes
***
All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.
More funny Frank Zappa quotes
***
Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.
More funny Frank Zappa quotes
***
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
More funny Gioacchino Antonio Rossini quotes
***
Lloyd Webber's music is everywhere but so is AIDS.
More funny Malcolm Williamson quotes
***
If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.
More funny Tom Stoppard quotes
***
When an opera star sings her head off, she usually improves her appearance
More funny Victor Borge quotes
***
I only know two pieces; one is 'Clair de Lune' and the other one isn't.
More funny Victor Borge quotes
***
You want something by Bach? Which one, Johann Sebastian or Jacques Offen?
More funny Victor Borge quotes
***
I know [canned music] makes chickens lay more eggs and factory workers produce more. But how much more can they get out of you on an elevator?”
More funny Victor Borge quotes
***
All of a sudden I found myself doing things like 'Robot Monster' and 'Cat-Women of the Moon,' and I didn't know what the devil was going on. But if you're going to do a really bad movie, at least you do one that is at the top of the all-time bad-movie list.
More funny Elmer Bernstein quotes
***
Respectable people do not write music or make love as a career.
More funny Alexander Borodin quotes
***
The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.
More funny Benjamin Britten quotes
***
I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.
More funny Gavin Bryars quotes
***
I don't think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.
More funny B. B. King quotes
***
I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.
More funny B. B. King quotes
***
Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.
More funny B. B. King quotes
***
Rap is poetry set to music. But to me it's like a jackhammer.
More funny Bette Midler quotes
***
There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them.
More funny Eugene Chadbourne quotes
***
We'll take a five-minute break while I go give myself hell.
More funny Antal Dorati quotes
***
I like jazz, but I could never play it. You just sit there with a guitar the size of a Chevy on your chest, wearing a stupid hat, playing the same solo for an hour.
More funny Dave Mustaine quotes
***
Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout.
More funny Melvin Maddocks quotes
More funny Mark Twain quotes
***
There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.
More funny George Bernard Shaw quotes
***
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
More funny Elvis Presley quotes
***
Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
More funny Voltaire quotes
***
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
More funny Igor Stravinsky quotes
***
Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour.
More funny Gioacchino Antonio Rossini quotes
***
Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
More funny Thomas Carlyle quotes
***
Classical music is the kind that we keep hoping will turn into a tune.
More funny Kin Hubbard quotes
***
We consider that any man who can fiddle all through one of those Virginia Reels without losing his grip, may be depended upon in any kind of musical emergency.
More funny Mark Twain quotes
***
The Mandolin is the bottom four strings of the guitar, backwards...so a person with dyslexia has no problem learning to play the Mandolin.
More funny Steve Goodman quotes
***
Do I listen to pop music because I'm miserable or am I miserable because listen to pop music?
More funny John Cusack quotes
***
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'
More funny Bob Newhart quotes
***
It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.
More funny J.S. Bach quotes
***
Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.
More funny John Lennon quotes
***
Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.
More funny Gioacchino Antonio Rossini quotes
***
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
More funny Igor Stravinsky quotes
***
I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different.
More funny Tony Bennet quotes
***
I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.
More funny Elton John quotes
***
I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is the language I don't understand.
More funny Sir Edward Appleton quotes
***
No opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not sing.
More funny W H Auden quotes
***
Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding, sings.
More funny Ed Gardner quotes
***
You know you're getting old when everything hurts. And what doesn't hurt doesn't work.
More funny Hy Gardner quotes
***
I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.
More funny Mark Twain quotes
***
Last night at Carnegie Hall, Jack Benny played Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn lost.
More funny Harold C. Schonberg quotes
***
It is quite untrue that British people don't appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.
More funny Sir Thomas Beecham quotes
***
The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.
More funny Victor Borge quotes
***
I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the manmade sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.
More funny Alfred Hitchcock quotes
***
Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.
More funny John Ruskin quotes
***
There are more bad musicians than there is bad music.
More funny Isaac Stern quotes
***
Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?
More funny Igor Stravinsky quotes
***
His music used to be original. Now it's aboriginal. [About Igor Stravinsky]
More funny Sir Ernest Newman quotes
***
Parsifal is the kind of opera that starts at six o'clock and after it has been running for three hours, you check your watch and it says 6:20.
More funny David Randolph quotes
***
One can't judge Wagner's opera 'Lohengrin' after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend hearing it a second time.
More funny Gioacchino Antonio Rossini quotes
***
I once sent him a song and asked him to mark a cross wherever he thought it was faulty. Brahms returned it untouched, saying "I don't want to make a cemetery of your compositions."
More funny Hugo Wolf quotes
***
The piano is a monster that screams when you touch its teeth.
More funny Andre Segovia quotes
***
I'd rather be a musician than a rock star.
More funny George Harrison quotes
***
I like to think of us as Clearasil on the face of the nation. Jim Morrison would have said that if he was smart, but he's dead.
More funny Lou Reed quotes
***
If you wanted to torture me, you'd tie me down and force me to watch our first five videos.
More funny Jon Bon Jovi quotes
***
I'm not really a good singer. But most people aren't, either.
More funny Robyn Hitchcock quotes
***
If you can sell green toothpaste in this country, you can sell opera.
More funny Sarah Caldwell quotes
***
There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead.
More funny Arthur Honegger quotes
***
Boys, look like you're having fun, but don't have any. (To his band just before going on the air)
More funny Lawrence Welk quotes
***
She has a nice voice, but she looks a little bit too much like Eleanor Roosevelt.
More funny Lawrence Welk quotes
***
Boys, if you don't stick together, how do you expect me to follow you-ah?
More funny Lawrence Welk quotes
***
I don't deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn't deserve that, either. So I'll keep it.
More funny Quincy Jones quotes
***
Critics don't buy records. They get 'em free.
More funny Nat King Cole quotes
***
I certainly hear the Trombones Unlimited version of 'Daydream' in a lot of elevators.
More funny John Sebastian quotes
***
The musicians that didn't know music could play the best blues. I know that I don't want no musicians who know all about music playin' for me.
More funny Alberta Hunter quotes
***
I'm glad there are a lot of guitar players pursuing technique as diligently as they possibly can, because it leaves this whole other area open to people like me.
More funny Richard Thompson quotes
***
You're willing to pay him a thousand dollars a night just for singing? Why, you can get a phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher for 75 cents. And for a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie. (Night at the Opera)
More funny Groucho Marx quotes
***
The soundtrack to 'Indecent Exposure' is a romantic mix of music that I know most women love to hear, so I never keep it far from me when women are nearby.
More funny Fabio quotes
***
Listen Edith, I know you're singing, you know you're singing, but the neighbors may think I'm torturing you. - Archie Bunker
More funny Carroll O'Connor quotes
***
I love to sing, and I love to drink scotch. Most people would rather hear me drink scotch.
More funny George Burns quotes
***
All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song.
More funny Louis Armstrong quotes
***
Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
More funny H. L. Mencken quotes
***
Remember that I wrote a pavane for a dead princess, and not a dead pavane for a princess!
More funny Maurice Ravel quotes
***
You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.
More funny Maurice Ravel quotes
***
After I die I shall return to earth as the doorkeeper of a bordello and I won't let a one of you in.
More funny Arturo Toscanini quotes
***
Assassins!
More funny Arturo Toscanini quotes
***
God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way.
More funny Arturo Toscanini quotes
***
He stole my music but he gave me my name. (on Mick Jagger)
More funny Muddy Waters quotes
***
I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know.
More funny James Brown quotes
***
I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated.
More funny James Brown quotes
***
I've outdone anyone you can name - Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.
More funny James Brown quotes
***
When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don't go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.
More funny James Brown quotes
***
Some kids in Italy call me 'Mama Jazz; I thought that was so cute. As long as they don't call me 'Grandma Jazz.'
More funny Ella Fitzgerald quotes
***
A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside. . . I'm going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do.
More funny Ella Fitzgerald quotes
***
I know I'm no glamour girl, and it's not easy for me to get up in front of a crowd of people. It used to bother me a lot, but now I've got it figured out that God gave me this talent to use, so I just stand there and sing.
More funny Ella Fitzgerald quotes
***
I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.
More funny Ella Fitzgerald quotes
***
The only thing better than singing is more singing.
More funny Ella Fitzgerald quotes
***
The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.
More funny Erik Satie quotes
***
I liked the bit about quarter to eleven. (on Debussy's "Dawn to Noon on the Sea")
More funny Erik Satie quotes
***
Before I compose a piece, I walk around it several times, accompanied by myself.
More funny Erik Satie quotes
***
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
More funny Steve Martin quotes
***
MTV is to music as KFC is to chicken!
More funny Lewis Black quotes
***
The opera is like a husband with a foreign title - expensive to support, hard to understand and therefore a supreme social challenge.
More funny Cleveland Amory quotes
***
Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
More funny John Cage quotes
***
If you would be singing like this two thousand years ago, people would have stoned you.
More funny Simon Cowell quotes
***
If your lifeguard duties were as good as your singing, a lot of people would be drowning.
More funny Simon Cowell quotes
***
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
More funny Edith Sitwell quotes
***
Beware the lollipop of mediocrity; lick it once and you'll suck forever.
More funny Brian Wilson quotes
***
The Prelude to [Wagner's] 'Tristan und Isolde' reminds one of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel.
More funny Eduard Hanslick quotes
***
There's people making babies to my music. That's nice.
More funny Barry White quotes
***
You got to have smelt a lot of mule manure before you can sing like a hillbilly.
More funny Hank Williams quotes
***
Get up from that piano. You hurtin' its feelings.
More funny Jelly Roll Morton quotes
***
I want to write songs that are so sad, the kind of sad where you take someone's little finger and break it in three places.
More funny Nick Cave quotes
***
During the 'whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa's' in 'Combination Of the Two,' I couldn't help but go to the mirror and pretend I was a wild woman like Janis, in a rock band.
More funny Joan Jett quotes
***
You have Van Gogh's ear for music.
More funny Artemus Ward quotes
***
I practice when I'm loaded.
More funny Zoot Sims quotes
***
I like your opera. I think I will set it to music.
More funny Ludwig van Beethoven quotes
***
The guitar's not all that expensive either, when you compare it to gettin' a tooth pulled or something.
More funny Merle Haggard quotes
***
I always said that I'm not the best singer in the world, just the loudest.
More funny Tammy Wynette quotes
***
We did consider the name 'Beetles,' but Jerry [Allison] said, 'Aw, that's just a bug you'd want to step on,' so we immediately dropped that.
More funny Niki Sullivan quotes
***
I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.
More funny Charles-Pierre Baudelaire quotes
***
I'd love to see Christ come back to crush the spirit of hate and make men put down their guns. I'd also like just one more hit single.
More funny Tiny Tim quotes
***
There'll always be some arrogant little brat who wants to make music with a guitar. Rock'n'roll will never die.
More funny Dave Edmunds quotes
***
I once told this writer a story about how I met the guys in an elevator and found out we all had the same last name, so we decided to form a band.
More funny Joey Ramone quotes
***
On matters of intonation and technicalities I am more than a martinet—I am a martinetissimo.
More funny Leopold Stokowski quotes
***
I only know two tunes. One is 'Yankee Doodle,' and the other isn't.
More funny Ulysses S. Grant quotes
***
A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.
More funny Sir Thomas Beecham quotes
***
Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away.
More funny Sir Thomas Beecham quotes
***
There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
More funny Sir Thomas Beecham quotes
***
If an opera cannot be played by an organ grinder, it's not going to achieve immortality.
More funny Sir Thomas Beecham quotes
***
Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.
More funny Sir Thomas Beecham quotes
***
Playing 'Bop' is like Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
More funny Duke Ellington quotes
***
I spent 15 minutes writing 'Stand by Your Man,' and a lifetime defending it.
More funny Tammy Wynette quotes
***
Basically, we put our songs together in very much the same way the guys in Metallica do.
More funny John Flansburgh quotes
***
I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.
More funny Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky quotes
***
A typical day in the life of a heavy metal musician consists of a round of golf and an AA meeting.
More funny Billy Joel quotes
***
John's just jealous because I'm the brains of the group. I've written all the songs, even from the beginning when I wasn't in the group.
More funny Sid Vicious quotes
***
Never hate a song that's sold a half million copies.
More funny Irving Berlin quotes
***
Personally, being somewhat envious of Richard's songwriting and guitar playing, it's somewhat satisfying he's not yet achieved household-name status. It serves him right for being so good. (on Richard Thompson)
More funny David Byrne quotes
***
When an instrument fails on stage it mocks you and must be destroyed.
More funny Trent Reznor quotes
***
These days, what isn't worth saying is sung.
More funny Pierre Beaumarchais quotes
***
After Rossini dies, who will there be to promote his music?
More funny Richard Wagner quotes
***
The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost.
More funny Bennett Cerf quotes
***
I always thought he sounded just like Yogi Bear. (on Bob Dylan)
More funny Mick Ronson quotes
***
When she started to play, Steinway came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano.
More funny Bob Hope quotes
***
They should be shot. (on the Backstreet Boys)
More funny Noel Gallagher quotes
***
His Majesty does not know what the band has just played, but it is never to be played again. (on Richard Strauss' "Elektra")
More funny George V quotes
***
When I heard him, I thought, if he can do that and get away with it, I can do it too. (on Sonny Bono)
More funny Ian Hunter quotes
***
In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of.
More funny Robert Schumann quotes
***
Rodgers and Hammerstein, if you can imagine it taking two men to write one song. (when asked "Who wrote 'Some Enchanted Evening'?")
More funny Cole Porter quotes
***
It won't be long before we'll be writing together again. I just hope they have a decent piano up there.
More funny Frederick Loewe quotes
***
I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.
More funny Richard Strauss quotes
***
When they called 'em rock'n'roll pioneers, they were talking about the music. But that pretty much described the living conditions, too.
More funny Waylon Jennings quotes
***
Do it again on the next verse, and people think you meant it.
More funny Chet Atkins quotes
***
My dad taught me about music. He used to tap dance.
More funny Ray Davies quotes
***
For 15 years, we always thought we would last as long as our last record contract.
More funny John Entwistle quotes
***
It's ill-becoming for an old broad to sing about how bad she wants it. But occasionally we do.
More funny Lena Horne quotes
***
I once served a steak to Janis Joplin at Max's Kansas City. She was quiet and very polite. She didn't eat her steak but left a five dollar tip.
More funny Debbie Harry quotes
***
A piano store looks like a funeral parlor for music.
More funny Ramon Gomez de la Serna quotes
***
It's not music, it's a disease. (on rock'n'roll)
More funny Mitch Miller quotes
***
I like Beethoven, especially the poems.
More funny Ringo Starr quotes
***
I refuse to slap some stupid words on the stupid paper just so we have a stupid song finished.
More funny Suzanne Vega quotes
***
Olivia Newton-John—Australia's gift to insomniacs. It's nothing but the blonde singing the bland.
More funny Minnie Riperton quotes
***
I am a greedy, selfish bastard. I want the fact that I existed to mean something.
More funny Harry Chapin quotes
***
Hits are for squares.
More funny Thurston Moore quotes
***
I'd rather be dead than singing 'Satisfaction' when I'm forty-five.
More funny Mick Jagger quotes
***
My present post amounts to about 700 thaler, and when there are rather more funerals than usual, the fees rise in proportion; but when a healthy wind blows, they fall accordingly...
More funny Johann Sebastian Bach quotes
***
Composers shouldn't think too much—it interferes with their plagiarism.
More funny Howard Dietz quotes
***
Someday we may have as many followers as the harpsichord.
More funny Eddie Condon quotes
***
It is not impossible that the future belongs to this 'traumverwirrten Katzenjammerstil' (nightmarish hangover style), a future which we therefore do not envy. (on Bruckner)
More funny Eduard Hanslick quotes
***
Even Bach comes down to the basic suck, blow, suck, suck, blow.
More funny Larry Adler quotes
***
Tipper and Al (Gore) came to a show the last time we were in Washington. They're nice people, a nice family. We made every effort not to frighten them.
More funny Jerry Garcia quotes
***
An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.
More funny Edith Wharton quotes
***
About as modest as Mussolini. (on Joni Mitchell)
More funny David Crosby quotes
***
A song without music is a lot like H2 without the O.
More funny Ira Gershwin quotes
***
My attitude these days is, if you write a bad song, what are they gonna do, throw you in songwriter jail?
More funny John Hiatt quotes
***
In opera, there is always too much singing.
More funny Claude Debussy quotes
***
To get your playing more forceful, hit the drums harder.
More funny Keith Moon quotes
***
I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
More funny Edgar Wilson Nye quotes
***
If I wasn't a musician, I would be a serial killer.
More funny GG Allin quotes
***
Traditionally, songwriters can't sing. And that holds true in my case, also.
More funny John Phillips quotes
***
Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.
More funny Lionel Hampton quotes
***
The world must be filled with unsuccessful musical careers like mine, and it's probably a good thing. We don't need a lot of bad musicians filling the air with unnecessary sounds. Some of the professionals are bad enough.
More funny Andy Rooney quotes
***
If I didn't do this well, I just wouldn't have anything to do...I can't cook, and I'd be a terrible housewife.
More funny Freddy Mercury quotes
***
For us the most important thing is to be visual, and for the cats watching us to have fun. This is all we want. We get very upset if people get bored when we're only half way through smashing the second set.
More funny Roger Waters quotes
***
I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.
More funny Woody Allen quotes
***
Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.
More funny Franz Liszt quotes
***
The privilege of directing this magnificent consort of artists is such that my pleasure would be diminished if I accepted a fee. I would, however, gladly accept a decent cigar.
More funny Thomas Beecham quotes
***
There are no women composers, never have been, and possibly never will be. (when asked why only male composers appeared in his repertoire)
More funny Thomas Beecham quotes
***
Too much counterpoint; what is worse, Protestant counterpoint. (of Johann Sebastian Bach)
More funny Thomas Beecham quotes
***
Beethoven’s last quartets were written by a deaf man and should only be listened to by a deaf man.
More funny Thomas Beecham quotes
***
All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.
More funny Frank Zappa quotes
***
Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.
More funny Frank Zappa quotes
***
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
More funny Gioacchino Antonio Rossini quotes
***
Lloyd Webber's music is everywhere but so is AIDS.
More funny Malcolm Williamson quotes
***
If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.
More funny Tom Stoppard quotes
***
When an opera star sings her head off, she usually improves her appearance
More funny Victor Borge quotes
***
I only know two pieces; one is 'Clair de Lune' and the other one isn't.
More funny Victor Borge quotes
***
You want something by Bach? Which one, Johann Sebastian or Jacques Offen?
More funny Victor Borge quotes
***
I know [canned music] makes chickens lay more eggs and factory workers produce more. But how much more can they get out of you on an elevator?”
More funny Victor Borge quotes
***
All of a sudden I found myself doing things like 'Robot Monster' and 'Cat-Women of the Moon,' and I didn't know what the devil was going on. But if you're going to do a really bad movie, at least you do one that is at the top of the all-time bad-movie list.
More funny Elmer Bernstein quotes
***
Respectable people do not write music or make love as a career.
More funny Alexander Borodin quotes
***
The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.
More funny Benjamin Britten quotes
***
I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.
More funny Gavin Bryars quotes
***
I don't think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.
More funny B. B. King quotes
***
I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.
More funny B. B. King quotes
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Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.
More funny B. B. King quotes
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Rap is poetry set to music. But to me it's like a jackhammer.
More funny Bette Midler quotes
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There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them.
More funny Eugene Chadbourne quotes
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We'll take a five-minute break while I go give myself hell.
More funny Antal Dorati quotes
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I like jazz, but I could never play it. You just sit there with a guitar the size of a Chevy on your chest, wearing a stupid hat, playing the same solo for an hour.
More funny Dave Mustaine quotes
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Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout.
More funny Melvin Maddocks quotes
Posted on: 10 March 2007 by Voltaire
Posted on: 21 March 2007 by Big Brother
Plato - "to be is to do"
Socrates - "To do is to be"
Sinatra - "Shoo bee doo bee doo"
BB
Socrates - "To do is to be"
Sinatra - "Shoo bee doo bee doo"
BB
Posted on: 22 March 2007 by JoeH
One more Beecham quote:
[of harpischord music] 'the sound it resembles most is that of two skeletons copulating on a tin roof'
And Lou Reed:
'Jazz-rock: if you can't do good rock and you can't do good jazz, why not put the two together and make one big piece of shit'
[of harpischord music] 'the sound it resembles most is that of two skeletons copulating on a tin roof'
And Lou Reed:
'Jazz-rock: if you can't do good rock and you can't do good jazz, why not put the two together and make one big piece of shit'
Posted on: 22 March 2007 by JWM
quote:Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:quote:Originally posted by JWM:
Beecham to a lady cellist:
"Madam, between your legs you have God's gift to man, and all you can do is sit and scratch it."
Beecham's quotation is actually funnier than that:
Madam between you legs you have an organ capable pleasing thousands, and all you can do is scratch it...
ATB from Fredrik
The Cellist was a lady called Madame Suggia, who passed herself off as cassals wife among other things! She only worked with Beecham once!
Fredrik - thank you! I am very happy to be be able to quote the quote absolutely correctly, AND cite the people actually involved!
James