A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHA great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHHe fell like a chicken into the soup.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHEvery piece of music is a form of personal expression for its creator. If a work doesn’t express the composers own personal point of view, his own ideas, then it doesn’t, in my opinion, even deserve to be born.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHWhat you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHOur business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHThe majority of my symphonies are tombstones.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHMusic is good, not evil. Poetry is good, not evil. Primitive, but oh, so true!
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHWhen a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHI feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin’s orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHI always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don’t succeed, I consider it my own fault.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHIn the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHI don’t know what will become of this piece. Our brave critics will no doubt charge me with imitating Ravel’s Bolero. Too bad – this is how I hear war.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHI live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHThose who have ears to hear, will hear.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHReal music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHIf they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH