Fun_People Archive
25 Mar
Music - Classical Humor

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 99 02:51:51 -0800
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Subject: Music - Classical Humor

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Classical Humor

"After playing the violin for the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, Albert
Einstein asked, "Did I play well?"
"You played relatively well," replied Piatigorsky.

"Harpists spend ninety percent of their lives tuning their harps and ten
percent playing out of tune."
-- Igor Stravinsky

"Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure
to thousands and all you can do is scratch it."
-- Sir Thomas Beecham to a lady cellist

"We cannot expect you to be with us all the time, but perhaps you could be
good enough to keep in touch now and again."
-- Sir Thomas Beecham to a musician during a rehearsal

"Anton Bruckner wrote the same symphony nine times, trying to get it just
right.  He failed."
-- Edward Abbey

When told that a soloist would need six fingers to perform his concerto,
Arnold Schoenberg replied, "I can wait."

"I would like to hear Elliot Carter's Fourth String Quartet, if only to
discover what a cranky prostate does to one's polyphony."
-- James Sellars

"Exit in case of Brahms."
-- Philip Hale's proposed inscription over the doors of Boston Symphony Hall

"Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always
by Villa-Lobos?"
-- Igor Stravinsky

Someone commented to Rudolph Bing, manager of the Metropolitan Opera, that
"George Szell is his own worst enemy."
"Not while I'm alive, he isn't!" said Bing.

"Jack Benny played Mendelssohn last night.  Mendelssohn lost."
-- Anonymous

"Her voice sounded like an eagle being goosed."
-- Ralph Novak on Yoko Ono

"Parsifal - the kind of opera that starts at six o'clock and after it has
been going three hours, you look at your watch and it says 6:20."
-- David Randolph

"One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I
certainly don't intend hearing it a second time."
-- Gioacchino Rossini

"I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music."
-- Benjamin Britten on Stravinsky's The Rakes's Progress

© 1999 Peter Langston