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Chopin Quotes

How one composer shaped the ones who came after.

Chopin's influence gets traced two ways here — forward, through musicians who grew up messing Around on piano before finding him, and backward, to how Bach laid the harmonic groundwork for Chopin and the Romantics.

Scriabin slept with Chopin under his pillow, and I slept with Wagner under mine. I could not concentrate on memorizing Bach fugues, but I had all of 'Gotterdammerung' in my fingers.

Quotes by Vladimir Horowitz

It is important for the musician to learn as much about the composer as possible and to study the music he has written. Then, even a short piece by Brahms or Chopin can be played with much more understanding.

Quotes by Vladimir Horowitz

When I was 5 or 6, I was messing around with the piano, and I listened to everything from Chopin to boogie-woogie.

Quotes by Taj Mahal

They both changed the way we hear the sound of the piano, both of them inventors of sonority: Chopin took bel canto singing lines and reproduced them on the keyboard above richly upholstered counterpoint; Debussy somehow preserved vibrations in the...

Quotes by Stephen Hough

Aretha Quotes

I think Bach is equally a romantic composer because he laid the seeds harmonically for people like Chopin and the great Romantics, Brahms, so it's difficult to you know all this like labelling and putting - I think Bach is...

Quotes by Nigel Kennedy

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin...

Maya Angelou

I used to get into the government car and switch on Chopin or someone I liked to hear at the end of a parliamentary day.

Quotes by Joan Kirner

It's all magic to me. Country to punk rock, all of it. Chopin to Kurt Cobain. But it always all comes back to punk for me, because that was the last time, punk rock or grunge rock, was the last...

Quotes by James Marsters

I really don't think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too.

Quotes by Gian Carlo Menotti

Around Quotes

I used to play the piano by listening to it - like Chopin pieces, when I was, like, a little kid - and then the minute my parents got me lessons to read music, I couldn't do it anymore.

Quotes by Eliza Coupe

When my dad went to college to get his master's from Loyola, he was playing Debussy and Chopin and Beethoven. But he played all that New Orleans stuff, too. I would go with my dad to gigs, pick up the...

Quotes by Dawn Richard

I've not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I'll listen to 'Spiral Scratch' by the Buzzcocks, or 'Hippy Hippy Shake' by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I...

Quotes by Billy Childish

I cannot listen to Beethoven or Mahler or Chopin or Bach when I write because those composers require you stop what you are doing and listen.

Quotes by Antonio Damasio

When I was a kid, I'd practise Chopin on piano - and I love Chopin! He's my dawg! Then I'd go out on the stoop and blast the radio. I'm from New York, the concrete jungle. Hip-hop influenced me from...

Quotes by Alicia Keys

Frequently Asked Questions

What do these Chopin quotes focus on?
Mostly how musicians relate to him personally, studying his work to understand it better, or discovering him as kids before knowing anything about classical music history.
Why would someone search for Chopin quotes?
Often for classical music writing or musician profiles. These quotes work because they come from people describing a real, personal relationship with his music, not just praise.
Is there a quote connecting Chopin to earlier composers?
Yes — one traces Chopin's harmonic roots back to Bach, arguing Bach laid the groundwork for Chopin and the Romantics that followed, which complicates the usual era-by-era labeling.
Do any quotes describe a personal ritual around Chopin's music?
One does, memorably, describing sleeping with Chopin's music tucked under a pillow, the same way another musician kept Wagner under theirs.
Is this topic only about serious classical listening?
Not entirely — one quote recalls discovering Chopin as a young kid messing Around at the piano, right alongside boogie-woogie, which keeps it from feeling purely academic.

One quote goes further, describing sleeping with Chopin's music under a pillow the way another slept with Wagner's — proof of how personally musicians attach themselves to a composer they've studied closely.