Franz Liszt Music Quotations

Oral musical traditions are rooted in assured and scrupulous faith.

The first impulse of a great number of civilized musicians... is to protest ourdeclaration that the music in Hungary belongs to the Gypsies.

Music is never stationary; successive forms and styles are only like so many resting-places - like tents pitched and taken down again on the road to the Ideal.

Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words.

For the virtuoso, musical works are in fact nothing but tragic and moving materializations of his emotions; he is called upon to make them speak, weep, sing and sigh, to recreate them in accordance with his own consciousness. In this way he, like the composer, is a creator, for he must have within himself those passions that he wishes to bring so intensely to life.

Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day.

In Hungary al native music is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance.