Gustav Mahler

Composer

1860-07-07

Books by Gustav Mahler

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If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.
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All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.
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It should be one's sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.
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The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.
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When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.
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If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.
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I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.
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Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.
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It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.
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The real art of conducting consists in transitions.
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I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.
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If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
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I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.
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I don't choose what I compose. It chooses me.
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