Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, best known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.
More on Wikipedia…
(4 quotes found)
“This severe, ascetic music, calm and horizontal as the line of the ocean, monotonous by virtue of its serenity, anti-sensuous, and yet so intense in its contemplativeness that it verges sometimes on ecstasy”
Charles Gounod
“Musical ideas sprang to my mind like a flight of butterflies, and all I had to do was to stretch out my hand to catch them.”
“I fight against the void. I think I've written something acceptable, and then, when I look at it again, I find it execrable.”
“My humiliating profession of decomposer of music.”