I'd like to hear your opinion on this piece of Beethoven…

“He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played…

— Elie Wiesel

I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I…

— Elie Wiesel

And now, in honour of the 150th anniversary of Beethoven's death, I would like to play 'Clear the Saloon', er, 'Clair de Lune', by…

— Victor Borge

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

“A deaf composer's like a cook who's lost his sense of taste. A frog that's lost its webbed feet. A truck driver with his…

— Haruki Murakami

“I hope Ludwig van Beethoven gets his cut, Langdon thought, fairly certain that the original inventor of bone conduction technology was the eighteenth-century composer…

— Dan Brown

Beethoven can't really be great because his picture isn't on a bubble gum card.

— Charles M. Schulz

“On behalf of all that is good and melodic, Ludwig van Beethoven, I apologize.”

— Sarah Strohmeyer

“Did Beethoven create his symphonies for his glorification? I don't believe it. I believe he created them because the music in his soul demanded…

— W. Somerset Maugham

I believe so, but at first he must know. He must know in which spirit Beethoven has composed this piece. He must try to…

— Kurt Masur

“You'll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public…

— Wilhelm Reich

The point of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony unleashes one of the most horrifyingly violent episodes in the history of…

— Susan McClary

“He had said it bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.”

— E.M. Forster

“That Beethoven was capable of producing the ultimate musical definition of heroism in this context is itself extraordinary, for he was able to evoke…

— Maynard Solomon

For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.

— Cornel West