Top 11 Quotes by Benjamin Britten

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.

Benjamin Britten

Strength, Music, Beauty

Music does not excite until it is performed.

Benjamin Britten

Doe

Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house-the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.

Benjamin Britten

Bricks And Mortar, Fog, Color

"The Classical Music Experience: Discover the Music of the World's Greatest Composers". Book by Julius H. Jacobson (p.341), 2008.

The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.

Benjamin Britten

Inspiring, Sleep, Writing

I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music.

Benjamin Britten

Musical, Opera

I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like, I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers.

Benjamin Britten

Music, Arrogant, Faults

Benjamin Britten, Paul Francis Kildea (2003). “On Music”, p.103, Oxford University Press, USA