Benjamin Britten Quotes

• It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.

  Benjamin Britten

  Strength, Music, Beauty

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• Music does not excite until it is performed.

  Benjamin Britten

  Doe

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• Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house-the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.

  Benjamin Britten

  Bricks And Mortar, Fog, Color

  "The Classical Music Experience: Discover the Music of the World's Greatest Composers". Book by Julius H. Jacobson (p.341), 2008.

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• 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.

  Benjamin Britten

  Inspiring, Sleep, Writing

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• I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music.

  Benjamin Britten

  Musical, Opera

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• One day I'll be able to relax a bit, and try and become a good composer.

  Benjamin Britten

  One Day, Trying, Relax

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• It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful.

  Benjamin Britten

  Music, Beautiful, Musical Life

  Benjamin Britten (2011). “Letters from a Life Vol 1: 1923-39: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten”, Faber & Faber

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• I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like, I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers.

  Benjamin Britten

  Music, Arrogant, Faults

  Benjamin Britten, Paul Francis Kildea (2003). “On Music”, p.103, Oxford University Press, USA

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• These two are not two, love has made them one. Amo Ergo Sum! And by its mystery each is no less but more.

  Benjamin Britten

  Love, Inspiring, Two

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• Composing is like driving down a foggy road.

  Benjamin Britten

  Bricks And Mortar, Fog, Driving

  "The Classical Music Experience: Discover the Music of the World's Greatest Composers". Book by Julius H. Jacobson (p.341), 2008.

  85 Copy quote

• The model of a composer.

  Benjamin Britten

  Music, Composer, Models

  4 Copy quote

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