Handel Quotes

• It was from Handel that I learned that style consists in force of assertion.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Style, Force, Assertion

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• Handel, to him I bow the knee.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Knees, Bows

  "Masterworks of Ludwig van Beethoven".

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• Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived... I would uncover my head and kneel down on his tomb.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Composer, Tombs

  Ludwig van Beethoven (2017). “Delphi Masterworks of Ludwig van Beethoven (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

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• Handel understands effect better than any of us -- when he chooses, he strikes like a thunderbolt.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Strikes, Thunderbolts, Effects

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• The King walks. He nods. His glance is like God's touch - under it all things spring to life. A wave of his hand and a hundred musicians tear into the Handel, making a sound you've never heard before, and never will again. A sound that goes through you, through flesh and bone, and reorders the very beat of your heart.

  Jennifer Donnelly

  Kings, Spring, Heart

  Jennifer Donnelly (2015). “Revolution”, p.106, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called "silent poetry," and poetry "speaking painting." The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Writing, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.48, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

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• You listen to Handel operas, right? And there are a thousand of them, right? And they all sound alike. If I look back on my work, maybe it's the same thing.

  Isaac Mizrahi

  Looks, Opera, Sound

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• I would still love to do more Handel. I think Handel was a fantastic composer. I did lots of Vivaldi, but it's also important to do the music of Handel, one of the greatest composers of the 18th century.

  Cecilia Bartoli

  Thinking, Important, Vivaldi

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• I'd like to get something together - like a Handel, Bach, Muddy waters, flamenco type of thing. If I could get that sound, I'd be happy

  Jimi Hendrix

  Music, Water, Together

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• The first choral music I remember hearing was Handel's 'Messiah' when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast it over the radio.

  Dave Brubeck

  Radio, Hearing, Firsts

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• I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner.

  Colm Toibin

  Song, Morning, Writing

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• Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Writing, Wrens

  1870 Society and Solitude,'Art'.

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• Every Englishman believes that Handel now occupies an important position in heaven. If so, le bon Dieu must feel toward him very much as Louis Treize felt toward Richelieu.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Believe, Heaven, Important

  Ainslee's Magazine, May, 1913.

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• Handel is only fourth rate. He's not even interesting.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Interesting, Rate, Fourth

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• There is nothing more profane than the image of an atheist with tears in his eyes conducting the glory and passion of Handel's Messiah.

  Frank Schaeffer

  Atheist, Eye, Passion

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• The only work that can be compared to Chopin's Etudes, innovatively, where every note is essential and one becomes completely exposed, is the Brahms-Paganini variations. These are etudes - not as interesting musically as, say, the Brahms-Handel - but they are incredible.

  Carlo Grante

  Interesting, Essentials, Variation

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• Karen Handel has run a 100 percent negative campaign.

  Nathan Deal

  Running, Negative, Campaigns

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• In a thousand voices singing the Hallelujah Chorus in Handel's "Messiah," it is possible to distinguish the leading voices, but the differences of training and cultivation between them and the voices in the chorus, are lost in the unity of purpose and in the fact that they are all human voices lifted by a high motive.

  Jane Addams

  Voice, Differences, Unity

  Jane Addams (2012). “Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes”, p.82, Courier Corporation

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• Music has always been a part of my spiritual seeking, from the moment that Handel's 'Messiah' gave me the experience when I was so young, and music has meant so much to me since then.

  George Ogilvie

  Spiritual, Moments, Young

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• His (Swami Vivekananda) words are great music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhythms like the march of Handel choruses. I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages of books, at thirty years' distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shocks, what transports, must have been produced when in burning words they issued from the lips of the hero!

  Romain Rolland

  Distance, Hero, Book

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• The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary. rather tiresomely addicted to dressing himself up as Handel or Beethoven and making a prolonged and intolerable noise.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Real, Noise, Sentimental

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• Take a Nicodemus and put a Joseph Smith's spirit in him, and what do you have? Take a Da Vinci or a Michelangelo or a Shakespeare and give him a total knowledge of the plan of salvation of God and personal revelation and cleanse him and take a look at the statues he will carve and the murals he will paint and the masterpieves he will produce. Take a handel with his purposeful effort, his superb talent, his earnest desire to properly depict the story, and give him inward vision of the whole true story and revelation, and what a master you will have!

  Brigham Young

  Giving, Effort, Vision

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• An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again.

  James Fenton

  Small Numbers, Ideas, Example

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