But the thing that will always occupy me the most is music.

It is desirable that people make music on the breath, with the breath.

All music has to speak in some form or other.

Within each individual young person you meet, you have the same fields to plow. The trick is just to wake thmem up, to sharpen their ears for what's already there in the music.

If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief.

Which is why, in my lieder concerts, I always strove, when possible, to sing only the works of a single composer, so that the audience could be gradually drawn into a particular creative genius' way of thinking, and could follow him.