Wise Quotations of the Great Music Composers
Book Review of Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers – by Patrick Kavanaugh
- J.S. Bach – Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.
- G.F. Handel – It pleased the Almighty, to whose great Holy Will I submit myself with Christian Submission.
- Haydn – Since God has given me a cheerful heart, He will forgive me for serving Him cheerfully.
- Mozart – God is ever before my eyes. I realize His omnipotence and I fear His anger; but I also recognize His love, His compassion, and His tenderness towards His creatures.
- Beethoven – In whatsoever manner it be, let me turn to Thee and become fruitful in good works.
- Schubert – It sometimes seems to me as if I did not belong to this world at all.
- Mendelssohn – Pray to God that He may create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us.
- Chopin – Oh, how good God is!
- Liszt – Through Christ alone, through resigned suffering in God, salvation and rescue come to us.
- Wagner – Christianity’s founder was not wise, but divine . . . To believe in Him meant to emulate Him: to hope for redemption, to strive for union with Him.
- Gounod – Besides Goodness and Truth, there was Beauty, which proceeded from the other two as the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son.
- Frank – Don’t try to do a great deal, but rather seek to do well.
- Bruckner – Sometime I will have to give an account of myself. How would the Father in Heaven judge me if I followed others and not Him?
- Brahms – In my study I can lay my hand on my Bible even in the dark.
- Dvorak – I study with the birds, flowers, God and myself.
- Elgar – The Spirit of God is not something less than God, it is God.
- Ralph Vaughn Williams – Why should we not enter into our inheritance in the church as well as the concert room?
- Charles Ives – Most of the forward movements of life in general . . . work of essentially religious-minded men.
- Stravinsky – The more one separates oneself from the canons of the Christian church, the further one distances oneself from the truth.
- Oliver Messiaen – I’m a composer because I love music and a Christian because I believe.
Other Christian Composers: Vivaldi, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Corelli, Rimsky-Korsakov, Palestrina, Massener and many others.
Source: Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers – Patrick Kavanaugh
