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I don't choose what I compose. It chooses me.

Gustav Mahler

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Gustav Mahler
Age: 50 †
Born: 1860
Born: July 7
Died: 1911
Died: May 18
Classical Composer
Composer
Conductor
Musician
Mahler
Choose
Compose
Chooses

More quotes by Gustav Mahler

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In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.
Gustav Mahler
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Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand.
Gustav Mahler
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I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.
Gustav Mahler
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It should be one’s sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.
Gustav Mahler
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Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.
Gustav Mahler
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I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.
Gustav Mahler
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A full cup of wine at the right time is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth!
Gustav Mahler
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Life's been nothing but paperwork.
Gustav Mahler
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The real art of conducting consists in transitions.
Gustav Mahler
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In Bach, the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God.
Gustav Mahler
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What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.
Gustav Mahler
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Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.
Gustav Mahler
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But it's peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me and this helps me again and again.
Gustav Mahler
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To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.
Gustav Mahler
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The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.
Gustav Mahler
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When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.
Gustav Mahler
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It is always the same with me only when I experience something do I compose, and only when composing do I experience! After all, a musician's nature can hardly be expressed in words.
Gustav Mahler
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I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.
Gustav Mahler
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I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.
Gustav Mahler
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Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.
Gustav Mahler