Best 20 quotes of Arnold Schoenberg on MyQuotes

Although our "gentle air" cannot improve the way hate and envy look, it does seem not to encourage firmness and decision. All is compromise; caution and refinement are everywhere. Everything has to "make a good impression" - whether or not it is any good: the impression is the main thing.

An artistic impression is substantially the resultant of two components. One what the work of art gives the onlooker - the other, what he is capable of giving to the work of art.

Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas.

Great art must proceed to precision and brevity. It presupposes the alert mind of an educated listener who, in a singleact of thinking, includes with every concept all associations pertaining to the complex.

I am the slave of an internal power more powerful than my education.

I find above all that the expression, atonal music, is most unfortunate — it is on a par with calling flying the art of not falling, or swimming the art of not drowning.

If music is frozen architecture, then the potpourri is frozen coffee-table gossip... Potpourri is the art of adding apples to pears.

I have never seen faces, but because I have looked people in the eye, only their gazes.

I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I don't know whether this is the cause why I did it in music and also why I did it in painting. Or vice versa: That I had this way as an outlet. I could renounce expressing something in words.

In Spring! In the creation of art it must be as it is in Spring!

Lucidity is the first purpose of color in music.

Market value is irrelevant to intrinsic value. ... Unqualified judgment can at most claim to decide the market-value - a value that can be in inverse proportion to the intrinsic value.

Music is only understood when one goes away singing it and only loved when one falls asleep with it in one's head, and finds it still there on waking up the next morning.

My music is not lovely.

My music is not modern, it is merely badly played

My work should be judged as it enters the ears and heads of listeners, not as it is described to the eyes of readers.

The principal function of form is to advance our understanding. It is the organization of a piece which helps the listener to keep the idea in mind, to follow its development, its growth, its elaboration, its fate.

You cannot expect the Form before the Idea,For they will come into being together.

If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.

İnsanlar 'konforu' buldular ve rahatı tercih ettiler. Çağdaş insanın amacı zahmetsiz bir yaşam geçirmektir. Yani, az hareketli, az yıpratan bir yaşam. Bu yüzden insan yüzeyselleşmiştir. Araştırmaz, incelemez, var olanla yetinir. Konfor zihinsel tembellikle eş anlamlıdır. Bu durum müzik için de geçerlidir. Geleneksel müzik durağandır. Ton sisteminin dışına çıkmaz, dolanır durur. Her ne kadar romantik besteciler kakışımlı ses ve akorlarla düzenin (tonun) sınırlarını zorladılarsa da, bu yeterli değildir. Sonuçta, düzenin (tonun) içinde hareket ederler. Tam kopuş yoktur. Nasıl ki; toplumdaki yozlaşmış ve tutucu, ahlaki değerlere karşı mücadele ediyorsak, yerleşmiş müzik kurallarına karşı da mücadele etmeli ve bu kuralları yıkmalıyız. Müzikte çözülen sınırlar, insan ve doğa, ruh ve dünya, ahlak ve toplum kurallarının simgeleridir.