Top 40 Thomas Beecham Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.”

— Thomas Beecham

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

— Thomas Beecham

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

— Thomas Beecham

4. “There are no woman composers, never have been and possibly never will be.”

— Thomas Beecham

5. “Magical music never leaves the memory.”

— Thomas Beecham

6. “We cannot expect you to be with us all the time, but perhaps you could be good enough to keep in touch now and again.”

— Thomas Beecham

7. “Her singing reminds me of a cart coming downhill with the brake on.”

— Thomas Beecham

8. “The sound of a harpsichord – two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm.”

— Thomas Beecham

9. “I find brass bands have a melancholy sound. All right out of doors, of course – fifty miles away. Like bagpipes, they turn what had been a dream into a public nuisance.”

— Thomas Beecham

10. “The bagpipes sound exactly the same when you have finished as when you started.”

— Thomas Beecham

11. “Elgar’s first symphony is the musical equivalent of St Pancras Railway Station.”

— Thomas Beecham

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

12. “I prefer Offenbach to Bach often.”

— Thomas Beecham

13. “A musicologist is a man who can read music but cannot hear it.”

— Thomas Beecham

14. “Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.”

— Thomas Beecham

15. “At a rehearsal I let the orchestra play as they like. At the concert I make them play as I like.”

— Thomas Beecham

16. “The grand tune is the only thing in music that the great public really understands.”

— Thomas Beecham

17. “If an opera cannot be played by an organ grinder, it’s not going to achieve immortality.”

— Thomas Beecham

18. “Composers and musicians have always starved and, as this is a sentimental country, we think the tradition should be continued.”

— Thomas Beecham

19. “They are quite hopeless – drooling, driveling, doleful, depressing, dropsical drips.”

— Thomas Beecham

20. “Too much counterpoint; what is worse, Protestant counterpoint.”

— Thomas Beecham

21. “It is quite untrue that British people don’t appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.”

— Thomas Beecham

22. “The sound of the harpsichord resembles that of a bird-cage played with toasting-forks.”

— Thomas Beecham

23. “The trouble with women in an orchestra is that if they’re attractive it will upset my players and if they’re not it will upset me.”

— Thomas Beecham

24. “Most people really don’t like music – they just like the way it sounds.”

— Thomas Beecham

25. “Beethoven’s last quartets were written by a deaf man and should only be listened to by a deaf man.”

— Thomas Beecham

26. “Music first and last should sound well, should allure and enchant the ear. Never mind the inner significance.”

— Thomas Beecham

27. “Movie music is noise. It’s even more painful than my sciatica.”

— Thomas Beecham

28. “A soprano in Massenet’s Don Quixote complained that she had missed her entry in the aria, “because Mr. Challiapin always dies too soon.” “Madam, you must be profoundly in error,” said Sir Thomas, “No operatic star has yet died half soon enough for me.””

— Thomas Beecham

29. “If I were a dictator I should make it compulsory for every member of the population between the ages of four and eighty to listen to Mozart for at least a quarter of an hour daily for the coming five years.”

— Thomas Beecham

30. “What can you do with it? It’s like a lot of yaks jumping about.”

— Thomas Beecham

31. “All the arts in America are a gigantic racket run by unscrupulous men for unhealthy women.”

— Thomas Beecham

32. “As you’ll never hear the thing again, my boy, why not throw in a couple of brass bands?”

— Thomas Beecham

33. “No operatic star has yet died soon enough for me.”

— Thomas Beecham

34. “No woman is worth the loss of a night’s sleep.”

— Thomas Beecham

35. “When asked whether he minded if someone smoked in a non-smoking compartment. Certainly not if you don’t object if I’m sick.”

— Thomas Beecham

36. “If she is attractive, I can’t perform with her; if she is not, then I won’t.”

— Thomas Beecham

37. “In the first movement alone, I took note of six pregnancies and at least four miscarriages.”

— Thomas Beecham

38. “I have just been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it.”

— Thomas Beecham

39. “The British like any kind of music so long as it is loud.”

— Thomas Beecham

40. “Without question the most unpopular medium of musical sound in the world.”

— Thomas Beecham