[the impression of the first time I heard Webern's music in a concert performance] was the same as I was to experience a few years later when I first….

The idea is distributed in space. It isn't only in one part; one part can't express the idea any longer, only the union of parts can completely expre….

Comprehensibility is the highest law of all. Unity must be there. There must be means of ensuring it. All the things familiar to us from primitive li….

As regards the presentation of musical ideas, obviously rules of order soon appeared. Such rules of order have existed since music has existed and si….

Your ears will always lead you right, but you must know why..

And the works that endure and will endure for ever, the great masterpieces, cannot have come into being as humanity... imagines. Man is only the vess….

Unity is surely the indispensable thing if meaning is to exist. Unity, to be very general, is the establishment of the utmost relatedness between all….

So how do people listen to music? How do the broad masses listen to it? Apparently they have to be able to cling to pictures and 'moods' of some kind….

It's always the same: mediocrities are over-valued and great men are rejected..

If you want to make something clear to someone, you mustn't forget the main point, the most important thing, and if you bring in something else as an….

The time was simply ripe for the disappearance of tonality. Naturally this was a fierce struggle; inhibitions of the most frightful kind had to be ov….

Art is a product of nature in general, in the particular form of human nature..

Except for the violin pieces and a few of my orchestra pieces, all of my works from the Passacaglia on relate to the death of my mother..

From this simple phenomenon, this idea of saying something twice, more often, as often as possible, in order to make oneself understood - the most ar….

What is music? Music is language. A human being wants to express ideas in this language, but not ideas that can be translated into concepts..

Music is natural law as related to the sense of hearing..

Indeed, man only exists insofar as he expresses himself. Music does it in musical ideas..