...imagine anybody having lived forty-five or fifty years without knowing Hamlet! One might as well spend one's life in a coal mine. - Hector Berlioz

A life without once reading Hamlet is like a life spent in a coal mine.

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

The Prince stood beside the timpanist to count his rests for him and see that he came in in the right place. I suppressed all the trumpet passages which were clearly beyond the players' grasp. The solitary trombone was left to his own devices; but as he wisely confined himself to the notes with which he was thoroughly familiar, such as A flat, D and F, and was careful to avoid all others, his success in the role was almost entirely a silent one.

Cette face de l’instrumentation est exactement, en musique, ce que le coloris est en peinture.