Walter Raymond Spalding: Quotes about music

Walter Raymond Spalding was American music pedagogue and author. Explore interesting quotes on music.

Walter Raymond Spalding: 20 quotes0 likes

“The Introductory chords dissolve the dream which the music has evoked, and we are back once more in the world of reality.”

Walter Raymond Spalding

On the Coda of the Midsummer Night's Dream Overture, page 187 https://books.google.com/books?id=pQARAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA187. Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Schumann and Mendelssohn (Ch. XIII)

“A knowledge of Bach is the beginning of musical wisdom.”

Walter Raymond Spalding

Page 47 https://books.google.com/books?id=pQARAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA47. Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Polyphonic Music; Sebastian Bach (Ch. III)

“The rhythm of music, akin to the human heart-beat and to the ceaseless change and motion, which is the basic fact in all life, apeals at once to our own physical vitality.”

Walter Raymond Spalding

Page 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=pQARAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA3. Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Preliminary Considerations (Ch. I)

“One of the peculiar characteristics of music is that it is both the most natural and least artificial of the arts, and as well the most complicated and subtle.”

Walter Raymond Spalding

Page 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=pQARAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA3. Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Preliminary Considerations (Ch. I)

“Of all the arts, music makes the most direct appeal to the emotions and to those shadowy, but real portions of our being called the imagination and the soul. Emotion is as indispensible to music as love to religion.”

Walter Raymond Spalding

Page 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=pQARAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA3. Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Preliminary Considerations (Ch. I)

“Music is of such power and glory that we should be ready to devote to its study as much time as to a foreign language.”

Walter Raymond Spalding

Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Preface

“Music requires active cooperation by the hearer.”

Walter Raymond Spalding

Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Preface