Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Quotes

• Within each individual young person you meet, you have the same fields to plough. The trick is just to wake them up, to sharpen their ears for what's already there in the music.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Listening, Ears, Fields

  45 Copy quote

• All music has to speak in some form or other.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Speak, Form

  47 Copy quote

• With creative people, truly new horizons open up.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  People, Creative, New Horizons

  38 Copy quote

• The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don't talk about it.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Children, Book, Unborn Child

  15 Copy quote

• When you go out onto the stage, all the preparation has to be forced into your subconscious. For the moment of the performance, we all have to return to a new level of unconsciousness. All the reflection and all the doubts have to be laid aside before you start.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Reflection, Doubt, Preparation

  7 Copy quote

• In Romanticism, the main determinant is the mood, the atmosphere. And in that regard, you could also describe Schubert as a Romantic.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Romantic, Atmosphere, Mood

  20 Copy quote

• Unfortunately, it happens all too seldom that you really disappear behind a work, that you are no longer audible as an interpreter.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Disappear, Behinds, Happens

  8 Copy quote

• It is desirable that people make music on the breath, with the breath.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  People, Breaths, Desirable

  6 Copy quote

• What concerns me, is the general social tendency to enforce a level, above which nothing rises and stands out.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Levels, Standing Out, Social

  4 Copy quote

• Toward the end of his life, one can sense that he was no longer thinking his way into the minds of others, causing them to speak on his behalf, but that he was now speaking for himself.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Thinking, Mind, Way

  7 Copy quote

• The work is the most important thing.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Important, Important Things

  4 Copy quote

• The composition of a single melody is born out of a bit of text, perhaps the first line, but it can also be the entire strophe; it can even be the poem's overall form.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Lines, Firsts, Form

  7 Copy quote

• But the thing that will always occupy me the most is music.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  7 Copy quote

• ...in my lieder concerts, I always strove, when possible, to sing only the works of a single composer, so that the audience could be gradually drawn into a particular creative genius' way of thinking, and could follow him.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Thinking, Creative, Genius

  4 Copy quote

• Some critics have written that I wanted to teach through singing. Not at all. I was learning I went to school every time I gave a song recital.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Song, School, Singing

  4 Copy quote

• Particularly at around the age of 70 you reach a stage where you have to be very careful. If, at that point, you abandon the work you have been doing, there is a good chance that you will just collapse and drift.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Age, Chance, Abandon

  8 Copy quote

• If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Song, Opportunity, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Doors, House, Unity

  8 Copy quote

• In fact, the element of play has an important role in my life, and I think that should be the case in the life of every artist. Our life is occupied with playing, whether we play an instrument or a role.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Artist, Thinking, Play

  4 Copy quote

• The reason why Schubert is celebrated so much today, lies rather in the fact that there has been nobody else like him - not before him, not after him.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Lying, Facts, Reason Why

  4 Copy quote

• Anyone who draws attention to himself as an individual, is viewed with suspicion. We acquired this tendency, of course, from America, and we must resist it: levelling, and imitation of what others are already doing.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  America, Attention, Imitation

  16 Copy quote

• I came together with younger musicians and tried to pass on my own experiences. In the process, I always tried to maintain my curiosity and spontaneity.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Curiosity, Together, Musician

  7 Copy quote

• Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Way, Form, Found

  8 Copy quote

• Admittedly, it is really our duty, as artists, to hold up a mirror to our own era; but, on the other hand, these works have lives of their own, and they're still alive today.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Artist, Mirrors, Hands

  4 Copy quote

• But, on the other hand, if Schubert were alive today, he would find even richer fields to plow.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Hands, Live For Today, Alive

  7 Copy quote

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