Michael Tilson Thomas

How famous is Beethoven?

Even Chuck Berry knows who he is.

Roll over, Beethoven, tell Sikorsky the news.

Which is pretty good for a guy who lived 200 years ago and never even had a gold record.

Yes, indeed.

Well, they did.

Many people did.

I mean, also Copland.

But I very early perceived that there were some people in the music business who had been playing music for their whole lives, who seemed to be ennobled and transfigured nearly by the process of making music, and others who seemed to be very unhappy and embittered by the experience of making music.

And

So I was trying from the very beginning to understand what was the difference between these people.

Where did the choice lie between having a life in music that made you very, very happy or one that made you very frustrated?

Well, I decided way back then that it was important for musicians to kind of take a musical Hippocratic oath before they went into the profession.

That you have to discover that it's just necessary for you to make music.

I mean, to be a musician, you have to love music as much as eating or sleeping or dreaming or all those other ings.

And you can't be sure when you...

enter the profession of music where it may take you.

It is uncertain.

It depends a lot on being very well prepared and being in the right place at the right time.

But I remember a moment when I was around 18 or 19 and I was walking on the USC campus where I was going to school.