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Great quotations: Berlioz on Beethoven

A Minute with Miles
Mary Noble Ours
/
SC Public Radio

The words today of Hector Berlioz, writing about Beethoven:

“… the thousands of men and women… whom he has so often carried away on the wings of his thought to the highest regions of poetry…

the humorists whom he has diverted by so many witty and unexpected turns; the thinkers to whose reveries he has opened immeasurable realms; the lovers whom he has moved by reawakening the memory of their first tender affection; the hearts, wrung by an unjust fate, to which his energetic accents have given strength for a momentary revolt…; the religious souls to whom he has spoken of God; the nature-lovers for whom he has so faithfully depicted [both] the carefree contemplative life of the countryside…[and] the terror of the hurricane… - today all these intelligent and sensitive souls, on whom his genius has shed its radiance, turned to him as toward a benefactor and a friend.” Berlioz, on Beethoven.

A Minute with Miles is a production of South Carolina Public Radio, made possible by the J.M. Smith Corporation.

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Miles Hoffman is the founder and violist of the American Chamber Players, with whom he regularly tours the United States, and the Virginia I. Norman Distinguished Visiting Professor of Chamber Music at the Schwob School of Music, in Columbus, Georgia. He has appeared as viola soloist with orchestras across the country, and his solo performances on YouTube have received well over 700,000 views.