“Come then, expressive silence, muse His praise.”
James Thomson (poet) (1700–1748) Scottish writer (1700-1748)
Source: Hymn (1730), line 118.
“After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
"The Rest is Silence"
Source: Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)
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Aldous Huxley290
English writer 1894–1963Related quotes
Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982) Polish-American classical pianist
John Guinn (December 22, 1982) "Rubinstein Was His Music", Detroit Free Press, p. 8D.
Attributed
“Hymn tunes are the nearest we've got to English folk music.”
John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster
citation needed
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer
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.
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society
Source: On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening (1938), p. 271
“What is to come will emerge only after long suffering, long silence.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
“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
