Maurice Ravel

“You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.”

“דיאגילב מת בצרחות, גוגול מת בקול צחוק, אך ראוול מת לאט, וזהו המוות הקשה מכול.”

“הבולרו הוא הקטע המוזיקלי הפופולרי ביותר שיצא אי־פעם מצרפת, יותר מכל שירי סרז' גינסבורג וז'אק ברל גם יחד. לפי הדיווח הרשמי של אגודת הקומפוזיטורים בפריז, הבולרו מושמע אי־שם בעולם בכל עשר דקות.”

“הפסנתר הוא ספר הלימוד להרמוניה של המלחין. הכול נמצא בו.”

“רומן האהבה היחיד שלי היה עם מוזיקה.”

“מוזיקה נהדרת חייבת לבוא מהלב.”

“Does it not occur to people that I might be artificial by nature?”

“The only love affair I have ever had was with music.”

“I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work - the best and the worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively little.”

“We should always remember that sensitiveness and emotion constitute the real content of a work of art.”

“I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I tore it out of me by pieces.”

“Remember that I wrote a pavane for a dead princess, and not a dead pavane for a princess!”

“I begin by considering an effect.”

“My intention here is to make it clear that not a single cell of my composition, here in regard to The Raven, is found by chance or intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precision and inevitability of a mathematical equation.”

“For Debussy the musician and the man I have had profound admiration, but by nature I'm different from him. I think I have always personally followed a direction opposed to that of the symbolism of Debussy.”

“Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.”