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When you go out onto the stage, all the preparation has to be forced into your subconscious. For the moment of the performance, we all have to return to a new level of unconsciousness. All the reflection and all the doubts have to be laid aside before you start.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

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Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Age: 86 †
Born: 1925
Born: May 28
Died: 2012
Died: May 18
Baritone
Composer
Conductor
Musician
Musicologist
Opera Singer
Berlin
Germany
Moment
Performances
Doubts
Moments
Reflection
Subconscious
Level
Laid
Return
Aside
Levels
Onto
Stage
Forced
Doubt
Preparation
Start
Performance
Unconsciousness

More quotes by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

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I came together with younger musicians and tried to pass on my own experiences. In the process, I always tried to maintain my curiosity and spontaneity.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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But the thing that will always occupy me the most is music.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don't talk about it.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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In Romanticism, the main determinant is the mood, the atmosphere. And in that regard, you could also describe Schubert as a Romantic.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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Some critics have written that I wanted to teach through singing. Not at all. I was learning I went to school every time I gave a song recital.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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The composition of a single melody is born out of a bit of text, perhaps the first line, but it can also be the entire strophe it can even be the poem's overall form.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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Brahms believed that there was no need to publish absolutely everything that Schubert ever wrote.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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In fact, the element of play has an important role in my life, and I think that should be the case in the life of every artist. Our life is occupied with playing, whether we play an instrument or a role.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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Anyone who draws attention to himself as an individual, is viewed with suspicion. We acquired this tendency, of course, from America, and we must resist it: levelling, and imitation of what others are already doing.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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With creative people, truly new horizons open up.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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It is desirable that people make music on the breath, with the breath.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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Admittedly, it is really our duty, as artists, to hold up a mirror to our own era but, on the other hand, these works have lives of their own, and they're still alive today.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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One has to get through a big pile of mail every day. I don't pass my letters on to a secretary rather, I try to take care of all of them myself.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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The work is the most important thing.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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Within each individual young person you meet, you have the same fields to plough. The trick is just to wake them up, to sharpen their ears for what's already there in the music.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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...in my lieder concerts, I always strove, when possible, to sing only the works of a single composer, so that the audience could be gradually drawn into a particular creative genius' way of thinking, and could follow him.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
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The reason why Schubert is celebrated so much today, lies rather in the fact that there has been nobody else like him - not before him, not after him.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau