“Music would take over at the point at which words become powerless, with the one and only object of expressing that which nothing but music could express.”

— Claude Debussy

As quoted in Debussy (1989) by Paul Holmes, p. 36
Context: Music would take over at the point at which words become powerless, with the one and only object of expressing that which nothing but music could express. For this, I need a text by a poet who, resorting to discreet suggestion rather than full statement, will enable me to graft my dream upon his dream — who will give me plain human beings in a setting belonging to no particular period or country. … Then I do not wish my music to drown the words, nor to delay the course of the action. I want no purely musical developments which are not called for inevitably by the text. In opera there is always too much singing. Music should be as swift and mobile as the words themselves.

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Claude Debussy 34

French composer 1862–1918

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“I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment – and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings which words are powerless to express and which are unattainable in painting and sculpture.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist

"The Power of Music" (1964), translated in Music Journal, September 1965, p. 37.

“If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music.”

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Finnish composer of the late Romantic period

Interview with Berlingske Tidende, June 10, 1919. http://www.sibelius.fi/english/omin_sanoin/ominsanoin_16.htm

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”

Victor Hugo book William Shakespeare

Ce qu’on ne peut dire et ce qu’on ne peut taire, la musique l’exprime.
Part I, Book II, Chapter IV
William Shakespeare (1864)
Variant: Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent
Source: Hugo's Works: William Shakespeare

“The over-publicized bit about expression (or non-expression) was simply a way of saying that music is supra-personal and super-real and as such beyond verbal meanings and verbal descriptions. It was aimed against the notion that a piece of music is in reality a transcendental idea "expressed in terms of" music, with the reductio ad absurdum implication that exact sets of correlatives must exist between a composer's feelings and his notation. It was offhand and annoyingly incomplete, but even the stupider critics could have seen that it did not deny musical expressivity, but only the validity of a type of verbal statement about musical expressivity. I stand by the remark, incidentally, though today I would put it the other way around: music expresses itself.”

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) Russian composer, pianist and conductor

Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft (1962). Expositions and Developments.
1960s

“After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"The Rest is Silence"
Source: Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)

“For I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existence. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention – in short, an aspect which, unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being.”

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) Russian composer, pianist and conductor

Igor Stravinsky (1936). An Autobiography, p. 53-54.
1930s

“Music is the pure expression of one's soul.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) La musica è la pura espressione della propria anima.
Source: prevale.net

“The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.”

Samuel Beckett book Three Dialogues

Also quoted in "Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde by Charles Juliet" by Nicholas Lezard, in The Guardian (23 January 2010) http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/23/conversations-samuel-beckett-van-velde
Three Dialogues (1949)

“Music is not a hobby, not even a passion with me; music is me. I feel what people get out of me is this outlook on life, which comes out in my music. My music is the last expression of all that.”

Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982) Polish-American classical pianist

John Guinn (December 22, 1982) "Rubinstein Was His Music", Detroit Free Press, p. 8D.
Attributed

“Music would take over at the point at which words become powerless, with the one and only object of expressing that which nothing but music could express.”

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Claude Debussy 34

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