36 Quotes by Arnold Schoenberg

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

In fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind-not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written.

My music is not modern, it is merely badly played

Lucidity is the first purpose of color in music.

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

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

I owe very, very much to Mozart; and if one studies, for instance, the way in which I write for string quartet, then one cannot deny that I have learned this directly from Mozart. And I am proud of it!

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

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.