Richard Wagner
Quotations

"I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired . . ."

 

"One supreme fact which I have discovered is that it is not willpower, but fantasy-imagination that creates. Imagination is the creative force. Imagination creates reality."

 

"Joy is not in things, it is in us."

 

"I write music with an exclamation point!"

 

"Music does not express the passions, love or longings of this or that individual in this or that situation; it IS passion, love and longing."

 

"Music is to the other arts, considered as a whole, what religion is to the church."

 

"The language of tones belongs equally to all mankind, and melody is the absolute language in which the musician speaks to every heart."

 

"The purpose of art: to make the unconscious conscious."

 

"Truthfulness is an indispensable requisite in every artistic mind, as in every upright disposition."

 

"The whole duty of a conductor is comprised in his ability to indicate the right tempo. "

 

"The error in the art genre of opera consists in the fact that a means of expression-music-has been make the object, while the object of expression-the drama-has been made the means. "

 

"I know nothing at all about music."

 

"True drama can be conceived only as resulting from the collective impulse of all the arts to communicate in the most immediate way with a collective public... Thus especially the art of tone, developed with such singular diversity in instrumental music, will realize in the collective artwork its richest potential -- will indeed incite the pantomimic art of dancing in turn to wholly new discoveries and inspire the breath of poetry no less to an undreamed-of fullness. For in its isolation music has formed itself an organ capable of the most immeasurable expression - the orchestra."

 

"One supreme fact which I have discovered is that it is not willpower, but fantasy-imagination that creates. Imagination is the creative force. Imagination creates reality. "