What They Said

• Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure.
  KARL BARTH (1886-1968)

• Not Bach (German for "brook") but Ocean should be his name.
  BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

• Bach is Bach, as God is God.
  BERLIOZ (1803-1869)

• Study Bach: there you will find everything.
  BRAHMS (1833-1897)

• Bach is the foundation of piano playing, Liszt the summit. The two make Beethoven possible.
  BUSONI (1866-1924)

• To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervor, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine; such is Bach, the greatest and purest moment in music of all time.
  PABLO CASALS (1876-1973)

• Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars.
  CHOPIN (1810-1849)

• And if we look at the works of JS Bach--a benevolant god to which all musicians should offer a prayer to defend themselves against mediocrity--on each page we discover things which we thought were born only yesterday, from delightful arabesques to an overflowing of religious feeling greater than anything we have since discovered. And in his works we will search in vain for anything the least lacking in good taste.
  DEBUSSY (1862-1918)

  I expect you have noticed how you never hear Bach being whistled...an honor that is not denied Wagner: when the prisoners de luxe are released from their musical detention centers, you often hear the Spring Song or the opening phrase of Die Meistersinger being whistled gleefully in the street. I am sure that for a lot of people a piece achieves fame only by being whistled in the street, though one could hold the opposite view without seeming too extreme.
  DEBUSSY (1862-1918)

• If all the music written since Bach's time should be lost, it could be reconstructed on the foundation which Bach laid.
  GOUNOD (1818-1893)

• With my prying nose I dipped into all composers, and found that the houses they erected were stable in the exact proportion that Bach was used in the foundation.
  JAMES HUNEKER (1913)

• To be a good musician and not have the highest regard for the elder Bach is a contradiction in terms.
  MARPURG (1718-1795)

• In Bach the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God.
  MAHLER (1860-1911)

• ...the greatest Christian music in the world...if life had taken hope and faith from me, this single chorus would restore all.
  MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)

• Now there is music from which a man can learn something. [Bach motets]
  MOZART (1756-1791)

• Bach is the beginning and end of all music.
  MAX REGER (1873-1916)

• I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach.
  RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908)

• What gives Sebastian Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great expressive composers never sacrificed form to expression. As high as their expression may soar, their musical form remains supreme and all-sufficient.
  SAINT-SAENS (1835-1921)

• Music owes as much to Bach as religion to its founder.
  ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

  Playing and studying Bach convinces us that we are all numskulls.
  ROBERT SCHUMANN

• Bach is thus a terminal point. Nothing comes from him; everything merely leads to him.
  ALBERT SCHWEITZER (1875-1965)

• Departed Bach! Long since thy splendid organ playing
  Alone brought thee the noble cognomen, "The Great,"
  And what thy pen had writ, the highest art displaying,
  Did some with joy and some with envy contemplate.
  TELEMANN (1681-1767)

• O you happy sons of the North who have been reared at the bosom of Bach, how I envy you.
  VERDI (1813-1901)

• ...the most stupendous miracle in all music! [of Bach].
  WAGNER (1813-1883)