27 Quotes by Richard Strauss

don't perspire while conducting - only the audience should get warm.

Its a funny thing Alice, dying is just the way I composed it in Tod und Verklärung.

The aria, after all, is the soul of opera.

Never look at the brass - it only encourages them.

He'd be better off shoveling snow.

Must one become seventy years old to recognize that one's greatest strength lies in creating musical kitsch?

Ideas, like young wine, should be put in storage and taken up again only after they have been allowed to ferment and to ripen.

I want to be able to depict in music a glass of beer so accurately that every listener can tell whether it is a Pilsner or a Kulmbacher.

The most perfect melodic shapes are found in Mozart; he has the lightness of touch which is the true objective ... Listen to the remarkable expansion of a Mozart melody, to Cherubino's 'Voi che sapete', for instance. You think it is coming to an end, but it goes farther, even farther.