Quotes about music
page 10

“I don't play the tuba. The tuba plays me. My tuba is not actually a tuba, because it has never produced a musical sound. It is actually a giant frog pretending to be a tuba.”

David Klass book You Don't Know Me

Source: You Don't Know Me

“All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)

Feeling, Motivation

“There is a music for lonely hearts nearly always.
If the music dies down there is a silence.
Almost the same as the movement of music.
To know silence perfectly is to know music.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

Source: Good Morning, America

Silence, Heart

“I love the way music inside a car makes you feel invisible; if you play the stereo at max volume, it's almost like the other people can't see into your vehicle. It tints your windows, somehow.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Source: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Love, People, Cars, Way

“She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music.
She had no friends, yet she was the friendliest person in school.”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

School, Dance, Personality

“A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts and to the singing of a bird outside his window and to the far-away voice of the sea.”

Axel Munthe book The Story of San Michele

Preface, 1928
The Story of San Michele (1929)

Books, Hope, Bird, Singing

“She wished there was some place where she could go to hum it out loud. Some kind of music was too private to sing in a house cram fall of people. It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

People, Singing, Housing, Personality

“And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

Life, Death, World, Universe

“As one old gentleman put it, " Son, I don't care if you're stark nekkid and wear a bone in your nose. If you kin fiddle, you're all right with me. It's the music we make that counts.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

“It was like I saw your soul in the notes of the music. And it was beautiful.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Princess

Beauty, Soul

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”

Billy Wilder (1906–2002) American filmmaker

“Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Love, Learning, Waiting

“Music is the true breath of life. We eat so we won't starve to death. We sing so we can hear ourselves live.”

Yasmina Khadra (1955) Algerian writer

Source: Swallows of Kabul

Life, Death, Singing

“Even from far away, I could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

People

“Next to music, beer was best.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Beer

“When you can write music that endures, bravo. Until then, keep quiet and study the work of those who can.”

Jennifer Donnelly book Revolution

Source: Revolution

Study

“The most significant gifts are the ones most easily overlooked. Small, everyday blessings: woods, health, music, laughter, memories, books, family, friends, second chances, warm fireplaces, and all the footprints scattered throughout our days.”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

Health, Books, Family, Laughter

“I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Memory

“[S]he leans into this guy and rocks her head like I’m making this music for her, when if I could, I would take it all away and give her as much silence as she’s given me pain.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

Pain, Guy, Silence

“One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

“What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Beauty, Heart, Personality

“What music is more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can't hear what they say?”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

Age and Death
Afterthoughts (1931)

People

“Is this really true? If we take an average day in the life of the average man we seem to see very little evidence of concern with the sciences and the arts. The average man gets up, goes to work, eats his meals, reads the newspapers, watches television, goes to the cinema, goes to bed, sleeps, wakes up, starts all over again. Unless we happen to be professional scientists, laboratory experiments and formulae have ceased to have any meaning for most of us; unless we happen to be poets or painters or musicians—or teachers of literature, painting, and music—the arts seem to us to be only the concern of schoolchildren. And yet people have said, and people still say, that the great glories of our civilisation are the scientists and artists. Ancient Greece is remembered because of mathematicians like Euclid and Pythagoras, because of poets like Homer and dramatists like Sophocles. In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, English Literature: A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974)

Life, People, Age, Art

“A few musical notes can morph into countless new songs, and a small set of vocabulary can create a congeries of poems. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

“Ah, deeply the Minstrel has felt all he sings,
Every passion he paints his own bosom has known;
No note of wild music is swept from the strings,
But first his own feelings have echoed the tone.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(27th April 1822) The Poet
4th May 1822) Sappho see The Vow of the Peacock (1835
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Feeling, Passion, Singing, Painting

“Nonsense. I think that the problem isn't with them downloading the song, the problem is when they buy the record and when they burn a million discs off their computer for all their friends. That's the reason why every single band, no matter who you are, your sales are chopped by fifty to sixty percent after your first week out. It's a huge problem, but instead of giving people more reasons to buy the product, they don't worry about that. I think you have to enhance the value of the product. Like when KISS was putting out records, their 'Alive' record sold so well because it made you feel like you were part of the concert experience. There was also an actual program in the thing, all these pictures, the KISS Army stuff… There's so much stuff that added to the value of that package. There wasn't a KISS fan out there who didn't want the whole thing, because everything that came along with the music was so worthwhile to them. It's not rocket-science, this stuff.”

David Draiman (1973) American singer and songwriter

Disturbed's David Draiman Offers 'Solution' To Illegal Music Downloading http://www.webcitation.org/64oENbO3B, Blabbermouth.net, 11 July 2003)

People, Feeling, Kiss, Problem

“Young Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis was well cast as the suave serial seducer with his aristocratic good looks and deep voice. Most women would find him charismatic if not irresistible. From the first moments it became evident that this company, with attractive sets and costumes, is miles ahead of most touring troupes. Theatrically and musically gratifying were the other cast members, all with international experience.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Corrine Dunn, "A polished Don Giovanni graces the Phil Stage", Naples Daily News (November, 2003) http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/prod_mozart_review.htm

Women

“That experiment prefigured today’s rap “artists,” who are entirely dependent on promoters, arrangers, and sound technicians, and create no music themselves.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: "Powerful Song, Man" by Jeffrey Tucker, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, August 1997, UNZ.org, 2016-05-22 http://www.unz.org/Pub/RothbardRockwellReport-1997aug-00009,

Dependency

“Where fashion in clothes, bodily adornment, and music are concerned, it is the underclass that increasingly sets the pace. Never before has there been so much downward cultural aspiration.”

Theodore Dalrymple book Life at the Bottom

Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (2001).
Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=GR5vAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PR14&ots=YQt2Bn14Ci&dq=%22downward%20cultural%20aspiration%22&pg=PR14#v=onepage&q=%22downward%20cultural%20aspiration%22&f=false Google Books

Fashion, Clothes

“This light is for the world
send it out with sword of fire,
with cymbal, drum and angel choir,
music in the heart of it
proclaiming that the lamp is lit
this light is for the world.”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"This Light Is for the World"
Universal Hall (2003)

World, Angels, Light, Heart

“I live cinema. I chose the cinema when I was very young, sixteen years old, and from then on my memories virtually coincide with the history of the cinema … I'm not a director with a personal style, I am simply cinema. I have grown up with and through cinema; everything that I've had in the way of education has been through the cinema; insofar as I'm interested in images, in books, in music, it's all due to the cinema.”

Michael Powell (1905–1990) English film director

Midi-Minuit Fantastique, Oct. 1968

Books, Education, Way, History

“Music moves us, and we know not why;
We feel the tears, but cannot trace their source.
Is it the language of some other state,
Born of its memory? For what can wake
The soul's strong instinct of another world,
Like music?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Erinna
The Golden Violet (1827)

World, Feeling, Soul, Tear

“There is no incidental music to the dramas of real life.”

Sax Rohmer (1883–1959) English novelist

The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (1920), ch. ix

Life

“The right, uplifted foreleg of the horse
Suggested that, at the final funeral,
The music halted and the horse stood still.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change

Horse

“There is a revealing sardonic comment by Leopold Godowsky on a well-known statement of Paderewski, who once boasted, "When I don't practice for one day, my fingers know it; for two days, and my friends know it; for three days and the whole world knows it." Godowsky added: "On the fourth day, the critics hear about it." In any case, poets and novelists are generally better reporters of the general state of musical opinion than music journalists, who most often have an ax to grind, or, quite reasonably and justifiably, a more limited set of prejudices to broadcast.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 2 : How to Become Immortal

World

“For years I have encouraged my patients and students to play musical instruments. I believe that it is essential for their ultimate health to be able to express themselves musically. Inside each of us is the deep desire to open our hearts and sing out with love. I find that when they allow music-making to enter into their lives, there is a beautiful change. There is an opening of the heart.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: The Life Energy in Music, Vol. 1 (1981), p. 105

Love, Health, Beauty, Change

“Roger: I was super, crazy little! Yeah, like my dad's a guitar player and my uncle was in bands when I was growing up. I sat behind a drum set when I was like six years old. I started taking piano lessons when I was like nine. So, like I've been around music my whole, entire, entire life.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Life

“Wally George: Tell me what is your band all about? I mean what is The Mentors all about?
El Duce: Well, I'll tell you son. It's like this, boy. We're heterosexuals. We wanna create more heterosexual music for the rest of the world. We're tired of sissie groups like Mötley Crüe and all this sissy stuff. We want rape rock!”

Eldon Hoke (1958–1997) Singer, musician

The Mentors on Hot seat, 1992.

World, Boy

“The car horns created an anxious music, discordant but not indifferent.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

The Immortals (2009)

Cars, Indifference

“My first memory of Nirvana was getting a cassette of demos, which ended up becoming Bleach. Everybody's response was that this was an amazing band and these were amazing songs. It was another indication that the Northwest had something special that you couldn't argue with.
It was pretty shocking to see a threepiece that sounded like that, and trying to get inside the head of a guy who writes a song like "Floyd the Barber" – where does the kernel of a song like that start?
The Seattle scene benefitted from an MTV culture, and it was because of the way Nirvana looked and presented themselves that created this kind of unanimous support worldwide. Rock music had become kind of hedonistic – 35-year-old men taking a helicopter to the stage and dating supermodels, and going out of their way to separate themselves from their audience. Nirvana, more than any other band, rocked way harder, had significant originality, while looking like guys you went to high school with. I think that was their secret. There was an inclusion that was long overdue, and it was what rock was supposed to be about.
The legend isn't simply going to be the way that he took his life; I believe it will always be the songs.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Soundgarden Era

Life, Men, Secret, School

“It is a fact that nine-tenths of the HUMAN RACE never have and never will think for themselves, about anything. Whether it's music or Reaganomics, say, almost everybody prefers to sit and wait till somebody who seems to have some kind of authority even if it's seldom too clear just where they got it to come along and inform them one and all what their position on the matter should be. Then they all agree that this is gospel, and gang up to persecute whatever minority might happen to disagree. This is the history of the human race, certainly the history of music.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"Untitled Notes" (1981), p. 374
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

History, Thinking, Waiting

“How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? How do you keep a wave upon the sand?' These words from The Sound of Music bring out the elusive nature of chaos. In life, most things cannot be captured for long. It is like trying to encapsulate time itself.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. vii.

Life, Nature, Time

“I almost never go to temples. I don't find the time. I'm not religious in that sense. My religion is my music. Lord Krishna is my God. Whenever I want to pray, whenever I want to meditate and concentrate, I take my flute. I can feel God. The feeling is difficult to explain, but I feel lost when I'm in it.”

Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938) Indian bansuri player

Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia in Hinduism Today

God, Religion, Feeling, Sense

“Imprisoned under all our layers of long underwear, thick socks, shirts, vests, jackets, coats and hoods were these tropical bodies; the steam and hot water brought color back into the pallor, found the nacreous hollow in a hip, detected the subtly raised triceps, rinsed a sharp clavicle in a softening flood, swirled dull brown hair into a smooth black cap and pulled evening gloves of light over raw hands and skinny, blue-veined forearms.Just as each shell held to the ears roars with a different ocean timbre, each of these bodies spoke to me with a different music, though all sounded to me unlike my own and only with the greatest effort could I remember I was longing after my own sex. Indeed, each of these beings seemed to possess his very own sex.”

Edmund White book A Boy's Own Story

Source: A Boy's Own Story (1982), Chapter Six (p. 153).

Sex, Color, Effort, Light

“Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

"The Habit of Perfection", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Silence, Singing

“Wally George: How do you describe your music?
El Duce: Well, it's rape rock.”

Eldon Hoke (1958–1997) Singer, musician

The Mentors on Hot seat, 1992.

“Music's exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.”

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

Quoted by Géza Szamosi, The Twin Dimensions: Inventing Time and Space (New York, 1986), p. 232.
1970s and later

Time

““Mani Madhava Chakyar when he portrayed Arjuna on the first evening and Ravana on the second, showed himself a master of the expression of the eye”
- Dr. V Raghavan, renowned scholar of Sanskrit dramaturgy, classical Indian dance and music, connoisseur of art and former director of Samskritaranga- Chennai, 1962.”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Abhinaya and Netrābhinaya <br class="br">Source: p. 21 http://www.google.co.in/books?id=O_U7AAAAMAAJ&dq=mani+madhava&q=mani+madhava&pgis=1#search Natya, Bharatiya Natya Sangh, 1962.

Art, Dance

“There's something about what we're doing, [which] is that we're meant to lose… every time! We make these foires, write these books and perform this music, but the big juggernaut of civilization continues and we've been kind of brushed to the side, but I think all through history there's been these kind of divine losers that just take a deep breath and go ahead—knowing that society's not going to understand it—and not even caring, because they're having a good time.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

Magic Trip, (2011)

Books, History, Understanding, Thinking

“One is tempted to call them works of genius; they are quite Homeric in their internal unity, purity of phrasing, clear, ringing music of language and dramatic coloring.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

Lin Carter, Dragons, Elves, and Heroes (New York: Ballantine, 1971) p. 76.
Criticism

Color

“So, music does not attempt to imitate Nature's sounds, but it does interpet and embody emotions awakened by Nature through a convention of its own, in a way to be aesthetically pleasing. In some such way, we, taking our hint from Nature, construct decoratively pleasing harmonies and symphonies of color expression of our sentiments.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Quote of Metzinger in 'The Wild Men of Paris', by Gelett Burgess https://monoskop.org/images/f/f3/Burgess_Gelett_1910_The_Wild_Men_of_Paris.pdf, in 'The Architectural Record, Vol XXVII, May 1910, p. 414

Color, Way, Nature

“In 1992 by chance I witnessed a drum and bugle corps competition on television and became aware of three-valve bugles. A year later my wife, Donna, and I attended a performance in La Mirada of the previous year's winner. I have experienced fine concert band performances and also good symphonies in my life, but what was not prepared for what I experienced that day. The entire bugle corps was turned away from us playing softly and suddenly they turned toward us and projected a very thick chord. Every hair on my body stood up (and I have a lot of it) and I decided at that moment to buy some of these instruments. In the next year I purchased approximately $14,000 worth of bugles. After having completed an orchestrational family all the way down to the contrabass bugle, I began writing. This album is the result of this particular interest in my sixth decade in music.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Written in 1997, from the liner notes for Jazz Corps (1998)

Life, Family, Way, Chance

“In this world, everything has a pulse or a vibration. This sound is unique to each living or non-living thing and in itself creates a music that no-one can hear. I believe that this has a very powerful resonance with, and a deep effect on, our lives. What would happen if we took this further and applied it to bigger things, more powerful things; like an entire solar system or galaxy say, what would that sound like?
Musica Universalis is the ancient theory that every celestial body, the sun, the moon and the stars, has an inner music. This is a harmonic and mathematical concept derived from the movements of the planets in the solar system. The music created is inaudible to the human ear.
Music of the Spheres is my interpretation of this theory. Every planet and every star; the whole universe has music within it that no-one can hear. This is what it would sound like if it was set free. This is Music of the Spheres.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

from the introduction to Music of the Spheres

World, Star, Mathematics, Universe

“I was raised in Germany until I was 13, and then my family decided to go back to Turkey. It was good in a way, because I studied music. And I went to a Turkish classical music school and studied music for three years. And then I just realized that I can't do anything else but singing music. And everything just happened naturally.”

Tarkan (1972) Turkish singer

Tarkan finds his moves take him across borders, CNN Worldbeat, August 9, 1999 http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Music/9908/09/tarkan.wb/index.html,

School, Family, Way, Nature

“Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere if they are serious about this music…The is no valid motivation for it other than love– outlaw motivation in a profit-motivated society.”

Mike Zwerin (1930–2010) American jazz musician

La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Swing Under the Nazis, Chapter. 4, 1985, Dictionary of Quotations, Chambers: Edinburgh, U.K, 2005, p. 937

Love, Motivation

“It is typical of Schumann's musical thinking to construct this complex network of references outside his music-to quote Beethoven, and then to have Beethoven's distant beloved refer to Clara. But this should give a clue to the nature of Schumann's achievement. It is not Schumann's music that, refers to Clara but Beethoven's melody, the "secret tone."”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 2 : Fragments

Secret, Quotes, Nature, Thinking

“We're free and easy. We're not very authoritative. We have no doctrine, no dogma. It is a community of mostly people who are interested in the arts, literature, photography, music.”

Irving Fiske (1908–1990) American writer

1984 interview, quoted in The Burlington Free Press (6 May 1990), p. 5 https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/201083677/

People, Art, Communication, Literature

“I understand the world through music and I believe that music shapes the universe. Mankind has always had a sense of wonder about space, has always been curious. It's something that's implanted in us. It's natural to want to travel and discover. It is, always has been, and is always going to be like this. We are space.”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

2001

World, Travel, Understanding, Nature

“The New Age music: "gave the opportunity for untalented people to make very boring music."”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

2005

People, Age

“It’d be great if the record industry wasn’t completely falling apart and people’s interest in music wasn’t totally disappearing. It’s sad on a cultural level. Not even from the perspective of being in a band, just as a fan. It’s heartbreaking to see how little music means to people in modern times. And people say, “No, no, no — music means more than ever before! People are consuming music at a greater rate!” Well, that doesn’t mean anything, that’s just a statistic. All that’s saying is that people are downloading music more than before. That doesn’t mean that they’re listening to it, that they know anything about it, or that they’re going to see it.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

Thrasher magazine, May 2010 http://www.thrashermagazine.com/articles/music-interviews/afi/

People, Sadness, Time

“Paul McCartney may be the closest thing our generation has produced to Franz Schubert -- a master of melody, writing tunes anyone can sing, songs that seem to have been there all along. Most people don't realize that "Ave Maria" and "Serenade" were written by Schubert (or that his "Moment Musical in F" so resembles "Martha My Dear"). McCartney writes with similar universality. His "Yesterday" has been recorded by more musicians than any other song in history. Its stepwise melody is deceptively complex, drawing from outside the diatonic scale so smoothly that anyone can sing it, yet few theorists can agree on exactly what it is that McCartney has done.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/31/AR2007053101848.html (June 1, 2007)

People, History, Universe, Singing

“I can write no more today. The contemplation of my sorry state has reduced me to so deep a melancholy that I contemplate opening my wrist like Petronius Arbiter and lapsing quietly into oblivion. Unlike Petronius, however, I shall have neither the sound of music nor the gentle talk of friends. I still have time to choose a better moment — besides, who knows to what nightmares I might awake.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Last lines which West had written for his unfinished work The Last Confession, about the last days of Giordano Bruno.
The Last Confession (2000)

Time

“I was surrounded by dance, music and religious chants, so it was that kind of a mood. Our family was very culturally-minded, especially my grandmother. She was also quite the disciplinarian. She made sure I practiced daily for hours.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

In "There's no slowing down for Vyjayanthimala".

Family, Mood, Dance

“Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Music.”

Sun Ra (1914–1993) American jazz composer and bandleader

"The Neglected Plane of Wisdom" (1966), p. 250
Sun Ra : The Immeasurable Equation (2005)

Freedom

“Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable [sic] as it is interesting.”

Brian Eno (1948) English musician, composer, record producer and visual artist

September, 1978, Linear notes from the initial American release of Brian Eno's "Music for Airports / Ambient 1", PVC 7908 (AMB 001)
A Year With Swollen Appendices (1996)

“In the final analysis the weakness of Black Power is its failure to see that the black man needs the white man and the white man needs the black man. However much we may try to romanticize the slogan, there is no separate black path to power and fulfillment that dies not intersect white paths, and there is no separate white path to power and fulfillment, short of social disaster, that does not share that power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity. We are bound together in a single garment of destiny. The language, the cultural patterns, the music, the material prosperity, and even the food of America are an amalgam of black and white.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

As quoted in Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
1960s

Food, Failure, Freedom

“I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.”

Billie Holiday book Lady Sings the Blues

Source: Lady Sings the Blues (1956), Ch. 4.

Way, Exercises, Singing, Success

“If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination… The movie has been signed by Michael Bay. This is the same man who directed The Rock in 1996. Now he has made Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Faust made a better deal.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/transformers-revenge-of-the-fallen-2009 of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (23 June 2009) <br class="br">Reviews, One-star reviews

Imagination, Hell, Revenge, Singing

“There was music all about us, we were growing quite forgetful
We were only singing seamen from the dirt of Londontown.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Forty Singing Seamen
Poems (1906)

Singing, Forgetting

“I think that commercialization in the long run will not affect the integrity of the music. In every venture, musical or otherwise, you will always have good and bad. The same applies here.”

Zakir Hussain (musician) (1951) Indian tabla player, musical producer, film actor and composer

In "The ring from Lata was like a blessing from Saraswati".
Quote

Thinking

“For language to be generative, children must not be learning by rote. Music is also generative. For every musical phrase I hear, I can always add a note… to generate a new musical phrase.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Children, Learning

“He was the first highly educated and cultured Filipino to direct he attention of his countrymen to their illustrious men, and to their art, literature, poetry and music.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

As quoted by Hartendorp “Don Pañong – Genius" in Philippine Magazine (September 1929).
BALIW

Men, Education, Art, Literature

“At some point along the way, people had introduced me to bands like Depeche Mode and stuff that was on the softer side of electronic music and that completely intrigued me because of the sonic capabilities and possibilities. I got intrigued with that and then somewhere along the way somebody handed me a Skinny Puppy record and I think that changed my musical life.”

Klayton (1970) American musician

"Klayton Scott - Celldweller," (2003)

Life, People, Way, Thinking

“I started keeping a list of these annoyances but it got too long and depressing so I just learned to live with them again. We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We get a lot done, and we have fun, but let's face it, the fundamental design of Unix is older than many of the readers of Slashdot, while lots of different, great ideas about computing and networks have been developed in the last 30 years. Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy.”

Rob Pike (1956) software engineer

Rob Pike (2004) in interview http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/18/1153211&tid=189 at slashdot.com, Oct 18 2004

Idea, Learning, Past

“I wasn't very happy with the way the music for Battra turned out. It was hard to tell whether it was a motif or just transitional material. So, I tried to avoid having that happen again.”

Akira Ifukube (1914–2006) Japanese composer

As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview III" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub3.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1995)

Happiness, Way

“Arre bhai…there is so much more to Indian music than those beats. I have done bhangra…nothing against it. But why do we present only that to the Indian and global audience. Punjabi language and music has become the language of the film industry unfortunately. Be it Singh is King or London Dreams or New York Beats are the same. agreed you cannot use classical or folk music in New York or Singh is King but London Dreams — it's supposed to be a musical. Music should have been the soul of it. But that is the weakest thing in the film. So much could have been done — classical music and folk music could have been used. But they didn't. They want to finish of work ASAP. Quantity, not quality has taken over.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quote, Grace personified: Waheeda Rehman

Dreams, Soul

“A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Voiceless; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Singing

“I had to learn my faith and look after my family, and I had to make priorities. But now I've done it all and there's a little space for me to fill in the universe of music again.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

On getting back into the music business, as quoted in "The Billboard Q and A: Yusuf Islam" by Nigel Williamson, in Billboard Magazine (17 November 2006)

Family, Faith, Learning, Universe

“If you've lost your faith in love and music, oh, the end won't be long.”

Carl Barât (1978) English musician

"The Good Old Days" (with Pete Doherty)
Music

Love, Faith

“I call [my music] ho-wop. It's the flavor of hip-hop, the flavor of doo-wop, and hoes.”

Eamon (singer) (1984) American singer

Quotes from interviews

“You put a blob of yellow here, and another at the further edge of the canvas: straight away a rapport is established between them. Colour acts in the way that music does, if you like... There is more sensitivity in technique than in the rest of the picture.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1946 - 1963, Cahiers d'art', 1954, p. 16

Way

“I wanted to experiment with that live energy, to push myself a little. It's very much about having intimacy with the music. I love theater - and I love playing in these old theaters. It's not a Vegas stage show. It's very much just me and the music and a five-piece band and a 20-piece string section from each city.”

Josh Groban (1981) American musician and actor

Miami Herald, 4/23/04

Love

“If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Part II: Letters (1887 - 1901) TO MRS. LAURENCE HUTTON Wrentham, February 20, 1898.
The Story of My Life (1903)

Perfection

“A world that is faithless would not be without the arts, either. Those don’t rest on faith, so imaginative art, literature, and music would still be with us. Too, we would retain justice, law, and compassion, perhaps in even greater measure than now, for our judgment wouldn’t be warped by adherence to unevidenced divine strictures.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 261

World, Faith, Justice, Law

“The music game is more than just my love for singing, its a sport for me.”

Keshia Chante (1988) Canadian actor and musician

Inside Entertainment (2008)

Love, Game, Sport, Singing

“Music conveys moods and images. Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it’s music, not words, that provides power.”

Marcel Marceau (1923–2007) French mime and actor

US News & World Report (23 February 1987)

Mood

“Music's golden tongue
Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 3
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

Age, Tear

“How do you stand this? I don't care who you are; man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, Jew, gentile, it doesn't make any difference - how do you stand this? I can't. I can not…I can't handle this- You wanna know how I deal with this? When I finish these topics, or these letters, or these diaries, or these reports, and the show's over, I have to blank my mind - literally. Can you do that? I can, I have learned how to do that. I blank it out. I don't know where Israel is, I don't know what Palestinian means, I don't know what burned and mutilated children have to do with anything - it means nothing, it goes away. I must draw a dark black curtain in my consciousness. I can not deal with this, how do you? I have children, I've had children, I have grand-children, I have a four-and-a-half year-old… This is not right! This is not right…”

Mike Malloy (1942) American radio broadcaster

Mike cuts feed to music early
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mWemE3fcVXo
On the conflict in Gaza

Children, Learning, Drawing

“This is a song about the reason we all came down here today, and that's because we (expletive) love music. This is a crowd-surfing song.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

At a concert, commenting to the audience about The Used's song "Burning in the Aftermath", reported in Jason Newell (July 8, 2003) "Teens chill at hot concert", Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.

Love

“What's holding me up is I'm confused about the nature of the music. Because the modern music doesn't reach me. I mean to say the sound of the modern electric production. A lot of sequencers… synths. That's what people are buying. Because that doesn't reach me, it throws me back to like 1948, but I don't want to be there. Back there, I'm talking about blues records…. The roots of rock 'n' roll is rhythm and blues and that's like really where I'm at, where I was always at.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

Strummer on Man, God, Law and the Clash (31 January 1988)

People, Nature

“A translation is no translation, he said, unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.”

John Millington Synge (1871–1909) Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore

The Aran Islands (1907)

“(When asked about gaming) I have a few favorites: Stand-up arcade game - 720 degrees, RTS - Command & Conquer & Star Wars Empire at War, FPS - Unreal Tournament 2004. As far as RPGs, I prefer good old D&D on paper for that. The game industry is as strong as the music and film industry now, and crosses over into both as well. I still play all the games I just mentioned every now and again. I find it intriguing that retro-gaming has come back in a big way. All the old arcade games from the 80s seem to have found their way back in the form of built in joysticks that plug into TVs. Xbox360 has live arcade downloads, the Wii has classic Nintendo and Turbo Graphix downloads, it's very interesting. I think people are recognizing once again that simple short fun experiences are just as good as having long huge production experiences. Theres something out there for everyone, and gaming is as much for adults as it is for kids. I love variety in gaming. For a good while there was too much of the same types of games year after year, and it feels like we're seeing more creativity again, which is a good thing.”

Frank Klepacki (1974) American musician, video game music composer and sound director

Gameplay magazine

Love, War, People, Way

“To me, music is oxygen and I know that someday even if I can't sing, I can always continue listening to it.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

Response when asked about her likes http://www.timesofindia.com/entertainment/hindi/music/news/I-like-my-father-being-the-boss-in-my-life-Shreya/movie-review/27854121.cms?prtpage=1

Singing

“[another part / version of Whistler's lecture:]
Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful—as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he bring forth from chaos glorious harmony. To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player, that he may sit on the piano. That Nature is always right, is an assertion, artistically, as untrue, as it is one whose truth is universally taken for granted. Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that Nature is usually wrong: that is to say, the condition of things that shall bring about the perfection of harmony worthy a picture is rare, and not common at all.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

1870 - 1903, his lecture 'Ten O'Clock' (1885)
Source: James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), Weinberg, H. Barbara, 'Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History'. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/whis/hd_whis.htm (April 2010)

Truth, Beauty, Nature, Universe

“The dull pulse-like beat started at eleven o’clock at night. It was a new kind of music called ‘rap’. It baffled Ananda even more than disco. He had puzzled and puzzled over why people would want to listen and even move their bodies to an angry, insistent onrush of words – words that rhymed, apparently, but had no echo or afterlife. It was as if they were an extension of the body: never had words sounded so alarmingly physical, and pure physicality lacks empathy, it’s machine-like.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Odysseus Abroad (2014)

People, Night