Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) German composer
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- Another equally true saying of Schumann is that, compared with Beethoven, Schubert is as a woman to a man. For it must be confessed that one's attitudes towards him is almost always that of sympathy, attraction, and love, rarely that of embarrassment or fear. Here and there only, as in the Rosamund B minor Entr'acte, or the Finale of the 10th symphony, does he compel his listeners with an irrestistible power; and yet how different is this compulsion from the strong, fierce, merciless coercion, with which Beethoven forces you along, and bows and bends you to his will.
- Sir George Grove in his Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn (London:Macmillan, 1951), 238.
- When his friends, says Czerny, speak to him of his youthful renown, he replies: "Ah, nonsense! I have never thought of writing for renown and glory. What I have in my heart must out; that is why I write."
Attributed
- Do you think I worry about your lousy fiddle when the spirit moves me?
- Beethoven, in response to a complaint about one of his string quartets.
- Thus Fate knocks the door.
- Beethoven, refering to the four-note motif heard at the beginning of his Fifth Simphony, according to his biographer Anton Schindler
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