When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.
Frank Zappa... was Beethoven for insane rock guys.
I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.
If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?
It's clear on the one hand that an education enriches and informs a response to beauty, even makes it possible in esoteric cases. On the other hand, there's no question that someone with no musical education whatsoever might wander into a concert hall and be overwhelmed by the 'Beethoven Pastoral Symphony'.
It's funny, because in 1970 I met the Beatles quite by a chance at a party. It was the Beethoven bicentenary, and I was then also playing the Beethoven Sonatas. And that's all they wanted to hear about - I wanted to talk about them, and all they wanted to talk about was Beethoven.
I think there's a poet who wrote once a tragedy by Shakespeare, a symphony by Beethoven and a thunderstorm are based on the same elements. I think that's a beautiful line.
I'm not a culture snob. So while, of course, I think the Mozart 'Requiem' or, say, Beethoven's 'Ninth' are some of the greatest works of art in the history of humankind, that's not to say the Beatles or Queen or Simon and Garfunkel aren't brilliant, beautiful, important works of art that should be sung without a sense of irony.
Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully.
If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation.