Thread by @rebeca6169

"Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment – and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings..."

~ Dmitri Shostakovich 💎 #BOTD 1906

"Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich

"When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich

"If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich

"I write music, it’s performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn’t need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music." ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo,with or without rhythmic nuances,and it will still be great music.That's how music should be written,so that no one,no matter how philistine, can ruin it.

"I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich

"Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich

"What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in "serious" music."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich

"We should think more about it, and accustom ourselves to the thought of death...I don't think writing and thinking about death is characteristic only of old men. I think that if people began thinking about death sooner, they'd make fewer foolish mistakes." ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

"The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich