Thomas Beecham Quotes
- "Have you heard any Stockhausen?" Beecham was asked. "No, but I believe I have stepped in some."
- Elgar's first symphony is the musical equivalent of St Pancras Railway Station.
- The trouble with women in an orchestra is that if they're attractive it will upset my players and if they're not it will upset me.
- I prefer Offenbach to Bach often.
- No woman is worth the loss of a night's sleep.
- There are no woman composers, never have been and possibly never will be.
- A soprano in Massenet's Don Quixote complained that she had missed her entry in the aria, "because Mr. Challiapin always dies too soon." "Madam, you…
- The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.
- Music first and last should sound well, should allure and enchant the ear. Never mind the inner significance.
- The British like any kind of music so long as it is loud.
- If I were a dictator I should make it compulsory for every member of the population between the ages of four and eighty to listen…
- All the arts in America are a gigantic racket run by unscrupulous men for unhealthy women.
- No operatic star has yet died soon enough for me.
- They are quite hopeless - drooling, driveling, doleful, depressing, dropsical drips.
- Movie music is noise... even more painful than my sciatica.
- A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.