“The Prince stood beside the timpanist to count his rests for him and see that he came in in the right place. I suppressed all the trumpet passages which were clearly beyond the players' grasp. The solitary trombone was left to his own devices; but as he wisely confined himself to the notes with which he was thoroughly familiar, such as A flat, D and F, and was careful to avoid all others, his success in the role was almost entirely a silent one.” ComedyComposerOrchestraConductorTrombone Book:The Memoirs Source: The Memoirs
“Fresh proof of the risks you run in writing about players, and of the advisability of not standing to leeward of their self-esteem when one has had the misfortune to wound it in the slightest degree. When you criticize a singer, you do not have his colleagues up in arms against you. Indeed, they generally feel that you have not been severe enough. But the virtuoso instrumentalist who belongs to a well-known musical organization always claims that in criticizing him you are 'insulting' the whole institution, and though the contention is absurd he sometimes succeeds in making the other players believe it.” HumorOrchestraConductorSinger Book:The Memoirs Source: The Memoirs
“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students." [Letter, November 1856]” LifeDeathTimeLessonsMortality Author:Hector Berlioz