Richard Strauss quotes:

I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

On conducting: If you can just barely hear the French horns on stage, the balance is perfect.

The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play.

I shall never be converted, and I shall remain true to my old religion of the classics until my life's end.

Never look at the trombones, you'll just encourage them.

The aria, after all, is the soul of opera.

Never let the horns and woodwinds out of your sight; if you can hear them at all, they are too loud.

Its a funny thing Alice, dying is just the way I composed it in Tod und Verklärung.

Bear in mind that you are not making music for your own pleasure, but for the pleasure of your audience.

Ideas, like young wine, should be put in storage and taken up again only after they have been allowed to ferment and to ripen.

Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them.

don't perspire while conducting - only the audience should get warm.

He'd be better off shoveling snow.

I want to be able to depict in music a glass of beer so accurately that every listener can tell whether it is a Pilsner or a Kulmbacher.

If you think that the brass is not blowing loud enough, mute it by a couple of degrees.

Must one become seventy years old to recognize that one's greatest strength lies in creating musical kitsch?

Never look at the brass - it only encourages them.

The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but the most difficult to play.

The most perfect melodic shapes are found in Mozart; he has the lightness of touch which is the true objective ... Listen to the remarkable expansion of a Mozart melody, to Cherubino's 'Voi che sapete', for instance. You think it is coming to an end, but it goes farther, even farther.