Thomas Beecham

“The British public is the best in the world. They will stand for anything.”

“Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.”

“Why do we have to have all these third-rate composers cluttering up our programmes with their third-rate music? The answer is, they're British.”

“A composer's music should be heard and not seen.”

“No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.”

“The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.”

“The function of a music critic is to inform the public that they have just heard a bad performance of a new work by a composer they have never heard of.”

“The public is not musical. It is not even unmusical. It is aggressively and invincibly anti-musical.”

“The sound of a harpsichord resembles that of two skeletons copulating on a tin roof.”

“Wagner's music is better than it sounds.”

“A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.”

“Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away.”

“I have just returned from America. The art of conversation there is to be sure that the other person is not listening.”

“There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what happens in between.”

“Try everything once, except incest and folk dancing.”

“Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands... and all you can do is scratch it.”