Quotes about music (3440 quotes, page 15)

“That all men are created equal does not mean that human beings are the same, or equal, in size, strength, beauty, virtue, or intelligence. There are obviously great differences in individual aptitudes and talents in sports, music, mathematics, speaking, and writing. They are also unequal in the virtues, among them courage, temperance, and justice. But as Jefferson once said, the fact that Sir Isaac Newton may be the most intelligent of living human beings does not give him any right whatever to my person or my property.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008), The American Proposition

Men , Justice , Beauty , Intelligence

“I had seen … the mistreatment and abuse of these elephants … and I was brought to tears. When you look at something like the circus and everyone's laughing and there's color and there's music and everything seems so great, but when you go right behind that door and they're in these crates all day long and then they're getting shocked and beat just so they can get up and dance around on a ball — it was just so sickening. … Stop going to the circus, don’t buy real fur, don’t buy a dog, go rescue a dog. You can’t keep supporting people who are doing this to helpless animals, at all.”

Olivia Munn (1980) American actress, comedian, model, television personality and author

“Olivia Munn's Exclusive Interview for PETA,” video on PETA's YouTube channel (27 April 2010) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9Qcq2j2tKA.

People , Dogs , Color , Support

“People who talk of the spread of music in England and the increasing love of it, rarely seem to know where the growth of the art is really strong and properly fostered: some day the press will awake to the fact, already known abroad and to some few of us in England, that the living centre of music in Great Britain is not London, but somewhere further North.”

Edward Elgar (1857–1934) English composer

Letter to Canon Gorton, organizer of the Morecambe Music Festival, published in The Musical Times, July 1903.

Love , People , Art , Strong

“So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it.”

Aaron Copland (1900–1990) American composer, composition teacher, writer, and conductor

Music as an Aspect of the Human Spirit (1954).

“If you think this was an isolated incident, let me paraphrase Pastor Martin Niemoller, "First they came for the music faculty and I did not speak out because I was not a musician. Then they came for the psychologists and I did not speak out because I was not a psychologist. Then they came for the biologists and I did not speak out because I was not a biologist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."”

Jon Appleton (1939) American composer

"The Decline of Academic Freedom at Dartmouth College", 20 October 2005.
Letter published in "Appleton Leaves Dartmouth", 2005

Thinking

“O Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid!”

William Collins (1721–1759) English poet, born 1721

Source: The Passions, an Ode for Music (1747), Line 95.

Wisdom , Pleasure

“Everyone in the band wore their influences on their sleeves and there was not a bit of the typical L. A. vibe going on where the goal is to court a record deal. There was no concern for the proper poses or goofy choruses that might spell pop-chart success; which ultimately guaranteed endless hot chicks. That type of calculated rebellion wasn't an option for us; we were too rabid a pack of musically like-minded gutter rats. We were passionate, with a common goal and a very distinct sense of integrity. That was the difference between us and them.”

Slash (musician) book Slash

Source: Slash (2007) by Anthony Bozza & Mason Segal,, p. 99.

Sense , Passion , Success

“Language is a gift that puts lyrics to the music of our lives. Without spoken language we wouldn’t be able to say, ‘I love you’. We’d have to say ‘uuurrrgghh’ or hold up a sign. And whether it’s one person’s gentle English or another’s muddy, arrogant French, it’s our language that makes us unapproachable and difficult to understand.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Love , Understanding , Personality

“I think, fundamentally music is something inherently people love and need and relate to, and a lot of what's out right now feels like McDonalds. It's quick-fix. You kind of have a stomachache afterwards. It's not wholly satisfying. And it's fake. I would hope that the music that inspired me, that got me going, that talked to me, felt like it was coming from some place that had some true emotion and true integrity behind it. I think that can reemerge.”

Trent Reznor (1965) American musician

Tribune Interview https://web.archive.org/web/20131216215825/http://www.sltrib.com/themix/ci_3069586 (29 September 2005).

Love , People , Hope , Feeling

“I met Sophie Taeuber in Zurich in 1915. Even then she already knew how to give direct and palpable shape to her inner reality. In those days this kind of art was called 'abstract art'. Now it is known as 'concrete art,' for nothing is more concrete than the psychic reality it expresses. Like music this art is tangible inner reality she was already dividing the surface of a watercolor into squares and rectangles which she juxtaposed horizontally and perpendicularly. She constructed her painting like a work of masonry. The colors are luminous, going from rawest yellow to deep red or…. blue.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Arp's quote on his wife, in 'Sophie Taeuber-Arp', Hans Arp; in Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories, ed. Marcel Jean, transl. Joachim Neugroschel; Viking Press, New York 1972, p. 222
1910-20s

Art , Color , Reality , Painting

“"Now he took the music of like Mandrill, like "Fencewalk", certain disco records that had funky percussion breaks like The Incredible Bongo Band when they came out with "Apache" and he just kept that beat going. It might be that certain part of the record that everybody waits for--they just let their inner self go and get wild. The next thing you know the singer comes back in and you'd be mad."”

Afrika Bambaataa (1957) American DJ, record producer and activist

Afrika Bambaataa, quoted in David Toop (1991). Rap Attack 2: African Rap To Global Hip Hop, p.60. New York. New York: Serpent's Tail. .

Waiting , Parting , Madness

“I found some consolation or narcotic. Sometimes it was a woman, sometimes a good friend — yes, you too once helped me that way — at other times it was music or applause in the theater. But now these things no longer give me pleasure and that is why I drink. I could never sing without first having a couple of drinks, but now I can also not think, talk, live and feel tolerably well without first having a couple of drinks.”

Hermann Hesse book Gertrud

Source: Gertrude (1910), p. 225

Pleasure , Way , Feeling , Drink

“I love all those great 'f' words - feminism, folk music..”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

from a 2003 interview with MuchMusic

Love

“With all your music, loud and lustily,
With every dainty joy of sight and smell,
Prepare a banquet meet to entertain
The Lord of Thunder, that hath set you free
From old oppression.”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

Sylphs
Poems (1851), Prometheus

Joy

“Rammstein is an award-winning music-based German-teaching system for American goths.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

lecture performance at Mueumsquartier, Vienna, 2016

“Anybody who wants to be a real musician must be able to set a menu to music.”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

Other sources

“For me… the notion of an intimate relationship between music and society functions not as a distant goal but as a starting point of great immediacy, and not as an hypothesis but as an assumption. It functions as an idea about a relationship which in turn allows the examination of that relationship from many points of view and its exploration in many directions. It is an idea that generates studies the goal of which (or at least one important goal of which) is to articulate something essential about why any particular music is the way it is in particular, that is, to achieve insight into the character of its identity.”

Rose Rosengard Subotnik (1942) American musicologist

Rose Rosengard Subotnik (1987). "On grounding Chopin", Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance, and Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521379776.

Way , Idea , Study , Distant

“Poetry Fetter'd. Fetters the Human Race. Nations are Destroy'd, or Flourish, in proportion as Their Poetry, Painting, and Music are Destroy'd or Flourish!”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

To the Public, plate 3 (the last paragraph)
1800s, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820)

Painting

“That is music of stunning perfection. It is him worthy.”

Joseph Martin Kraus (1756–1792) German composer

Das ist Musik von erstaunlicher Perfektion. Sie ist seiner würdig.

Perfection

“Silence more musical than any song.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

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

Silence

“I think there are some objective [musical] qualities… how complex something is, how melodic, how diverse the tonality is, et cetera. But I could also make a piece of music that contains all of those and yet isn't "good" from a subjective viewpoint. For example, take Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", Beatles "Yesterday", and Underworld's "Born Slippy", and play them all on top of each other at the same time. Great music in their own right, but terrible sounding together.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

Thinking , Time

“I simply make music, and people have always been foolish enough to pay me for it. I never told them that I would have done it all for nothing.”

Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977) British conductor

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Newton%2BClassics/8802024 CBS TV 1976

People

“Sudden and near the trumpet's notes out-spread,
And soon his eyes could see the metal flower,
Shining upturned, out on the morning pour
Its incense audible; could see a train
From out the street slow-winding on the plain
With lyres and cymbals, flutes and psalteries,
While men, youths, maids, in concert sang to these
With various throat, or in succession poured,
Or in full volume mingled. But one word
Ruled each recurrent rise and answering fall,
As when the multitudes adoring call
On some great name divine, their common soul,
The common need, love, joy, that knits them in one whole.
The word was "Jubal!"… "Jubal" filled the air,
And seemed to ride aloft, a spirit there,
Creator of the choir, the full-fraught strain
That grateful rolled itself to him again.
The aged man adust upon the bank
— Whom no eye saw — at first with rapture drank
The bliss of music, then, with swelling heart,
Felt, this was his own being's greater part,
The universal joy once born in him.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

The Legend of Jubal (1869)

Love , Men , Youth , Age

“I have tried… believe me, I have tried to like rap music. It makes me feel so very, very old. I have tried to get home with the downies.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Monster (2004)

Feeling , Home

“The film has written and spoken dialogue in twenty-five languages-English, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Latin, Hebrew, necrotic Egyptian … and it has written calligraphic text on paper, wood, and flesh, on flat and curved surfaces, vertically and horizontally, on both living and dead flesh, in neon, on screens, in projection, as sub-title, inter-title, and sur-title, as High Art and low art, as advertisement and banker's check and registration plate, on photograph, on blackboard, as letter correspondence, as photocopy facsimile, and spoken, chanted, and sung, with and without music … a mocking challenge. You want text? Cinema wants text? Cinema pretends to eschew text? Then we can give you text to mock that smug suggestion that cinema thinks it is pictures.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

"105 Years of Illustrated Text" in the Zoetrope All-Story, Vol. 5 No. 1.
105 Years of Illustrated Text

Art , Thinking , Dead

“And when did mediocrity become excellence in our country? Music is dead in 2011 because Lady Gaga lives. Really? Is that the best we can do? Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa, "Poker Face"? This stuttering, growling midget with a speech impediment is music? Really? This vapid, pop cancer, Madonna mini-me? She makes Miley Cyrus look like John Lennon. She makes Jack Lemon look like John Lennon. I'm sorry. And you don't get to claim you're not accepted at a billion hits on YouTube. And you're not an artist just cause you can wear a live chimpanzee as a bra. Lady Gaga is proof that David Bowie raped Carol Burnett.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Neverlution (2011)

Dead , Country

“I think a life in music is a life beautifully spent and this is what I have devoted my life to.”

Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) Italian operatic tenor

Penso che una vita per la musica sia una vita spesa bene ed è a questo che mi sono dedicato.
As quoted at a tribute page on his official website, lucianopavarotti.com (September 2007) http://www.lucianopavarotti.com

Life , Thinking

“Scotty and I became good friends. We had an immediate musical rapport that was sensational. We did a lot of listening and talking. Besides technique, he had governing, control. I think he was the first bass player who was fleet-footed in the musical sense.
[…]
What a trauma! It struck me right down—that someone I was developing such a relationship with would suddenly not be there.”

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

On bassist Scott LaFaro and his premature demise, as quoted in Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro https://books.google.com/books?id=KnTSqVu9Zr4C&pg=PA67&dq=%22Clare+relates%22+intitle:Jade&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAGoVChMI-9Dphf_kxgIVCGk-Ch3DaQiT#v=onepage&q=%22Clare%20relates%22%20intitle%3AJade&f=false (2009) by Helene LaFaro-Fernandez, pp. 67-68

Thinking , Sense

“When I’m creating at the piano, I tend to feel happy; but - the eternal dilemma - how can we be happy amid the unhappines, of other? I’d do everything I could to give everyone a moment of happines. That’s what’s at the heart of my music.”

Nino Rota (1911–1979) Italian composer

http://www.exnovoensemble.it/files/rotanoteEng.shtml

Feeling , Heart , Happiness

“Human process music using both absolute and relational processing… we attend to the actual pitches and duration we hear in music, as well as their relative values. This dual mode of processing is rare among species… These modes of processing and the brain mechanisms that gave rise to them were necessary for the development of language, music, poetry, and art.”

Daniel Levitin book The World in Six Songs

The World in Six Songs (2008)

Art

“Finally, the role of sound in these films is very important, and directors give it a lot of attention. We work hard, we try, it is not just enough to illustrate. We must build a character in its own music.”

François-Eudes Chanfrault (1974–2016) Composer and musician

CinemaFantastique.net interview (October 2, 2008)

“Chris Rock: I love the story of how you turned down an offer to appear in Michael Jackson's music video for, Bad.
Prince: You know that Wesley Snipes character? That would've been me. Now you run that video in your mind. The first line in that song is "your butt is mine." Now I said to Michael, who's gonna sing that to whom? 'Cause you sure ain't singing it to me and I sure ain't singing it to you so right there we got a problem.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

VH1 interview (1997) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9ZN9nKQqe0

Love , Problem , Appearance , Singing

“Most people don’t listen to classical music at all, but to rock-and-roll or hillbilly songs or some album named Music To Listen To Music By…”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”, p. 12
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

People

“Not only was I fiddling around at the keyboard but there were all these other children of all backgrounds wanting to play every sort of music bits of classical, jazz, pop, improvisation.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Guardian - 26/05/2000
Childhood

Children

“The last thing I wanted to do was put politics into my music... because music was my escape.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

iTunes interview (released June 2, 2007)
2007, 2008

“Those chimps and orangutans [in our music video] get treated better than the ones in zoos. They’re loved, and they’re taken care of much better and cleaned much better. And they’re only allowed to work a certain amount of time every day. Plus, we had someone from Animal Protection there the entire time, making sure everything was cool. It’s really weird that people got pissed off about that. Those animals were treated quite well, probably better than most humans, and definitely better than animals in the zoo.”

Joe Trohman (1984) American musician

My Heart Will Always Be The B-Side To My Tongue (2004), Ultimate Guitar Interview (2008)

Love , People , Time , Animals

“(When asked who the three finest old time guitarists were) Well, I would have to pick Travis, you know; I think he's a great man with his music, and there's been many a man that's copied from Merle. You know, they say he learned from a man in Kentucky. Well, I know this Mose Rager he learned from, he learned from Arnold Shultz, the man I speak of, a colored man, in playing the blues. So I think it all leads back to this old colored man back in Kentucky.”

Bill Monroe (1911–1996) American bluegrass musician

Color , Thinking , Learning , Time

“Through soundless labyrinths of dream you pass,
Through many doors to the one door of all.
Soon as it's opened we shall hear a music:
Or see a skeleton fall...”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Dreams

“It is a tough act to follow, for sure. As I’m hearing him talk through some of the things I’m realizing why our partnership works, because we both think the world of one another. Scott is the most disciplined, driven athlete I’ve ever met. There’s a fierce competitor deep within and the passion and the raw talent that is there — the ability to move and hear music and interpret it — is unlike anyone else I’ve ever seen on the ice. And I think because he wears his heart on his sleeve people feel so drawn in and captivated by his performances. He’s generous, thoughtful and extremely insightful. He’s able to understand the glide of the blade differently.”

Tessa Virtue (1989) Canadian ice dancer

Tessa Virtue, Interview for Sportsnet.ca (January 2018)
Partnership with Scott Moir, Tessa Virtue about Moir

People , World , Feeling , Understanding

“A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a rag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.”

Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Canadian poet

The Shooting of Dan McGrew http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/service_r_w/dan_mcgrew.html (1907)

Love , Game , Boy , Light

“The wine of Love is music,
And the feast of Love is song:
And when Love sits down to the banquet,
Love sits long:

Sits long and rises drunken,
But not with the feast and the wine;
He reeleth with his own heart,
That great, rich Vine.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

Part XVIII
Sunday Up the River (1865)

Love , Wine , Heart

“People call my music complex because I will have instruments playing at their own paces, as if the other instruments weren't even there. It doesn't march along in the same way that most older music does. But to me, I honestly don't think that a work like Debussy's La Mer is any less complex than my work. It's full of all sorts of sounds and textures going on at once, yet we still look at is as beautiful, structured and fluid. That's all I'm trying to do; I'm not out to compose for complexity's sake.”

Elliott Carter (1908–2012) American composer

From American Gothic: An Interview with Elliott Carter http://edwebproject.org/carter.html (1993) by Andy Carvin.

People , Beauty , Way , Thinking

“It is fitting that a discourse on Romantic music should commence with a meditation on the art of Bach. The Bach revival is still sometimes considered an early nineteenth-century phenomenon, although this is hardly tenable: in the 1780s Mozart was deeply affected by Bach, and at the same time Beethoven was being brought up on the Well-Tempered Keyboard. Bach was well known to European musicians as a composer of keyboard music through manuscript copies of this work long before systematic publication began in 1800. The "revival" of Bach in the Romantic period was basically a rediscovery of his choral works and a new evaluation of his technique: his art was no longer simply a model for the fugue, as it had been in the eyes of Mozart, but for the art of music as a whole. The new approach to Bach and to Baroque music in general, however, did not extend to the sound of that music on the original instruments. Few musicians in the 1820s and '30s 'had the slightest interest in the sonority of old harpsichords or Baroque organs (Ignaz Moscheles was an engaging exception). What they saw, and needed to see, in Bach was the achievement of an ideal.”

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

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 1 : Music and Sound

Art , Time

“Kierkegaard said that the only way we can be released from the enchantment, the siren song of the myths, is to play the music through backwards. To break the spell of the ego I must recover my personal and political history, I must demythologize the private, family, and public myths that have informed me.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 140

Family , Way , History , Personality

“I think it is considered bad to be clever, because I think people usually assume that a clever person or a clever band doesn't have substance, doesn't really care about anything. People want music that matters, that believes in something, I think, whether it expresses anger or despair or love. People want to believe that their artists are portraying emotions that they really feel. And I think that's true of Patsy Cline, Johnny Rotten, whoever you want to name. If you believe the artist, you're going to go for it.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

Quotes from interviews

Love , People , Feeling , Thinking

“Speech has arisen through the need for expression. Certain factors have contributed to making it the paramount utilitarian method of expression. There are ideas and things expressible in words, but there are ideas better expressed in music, the person with no musical ear, or without discipline in the language of music, lacks the key to the door of the world of musical experience. But we live in a world of volume and space; it is hard to conceive of the person who is space-blind or volume-deaf. The great majority of people have the means of approach to plastic beauty as part of their natural equipment. The teacher can develop this natural endowment as Necessity, the greatest teacher, has developed speech.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Painting and Culture' p. 57
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

People , World , Beauty , Idea

“I’m very skeptical in approaching Bach as a clean slate. To understand Bach, one has to be at home in the whole literature of art and interpretation; one must have great experience in performing the complete literature, from Bach until the early avantgarde. I’m absolutely convinced that only by this deep knowledge one can feel the all-embracing range of effects that are compressed in Bach and his music - and how later generations have been inspired. Only by this experience you can give the Bach interpretation a new balance and tension. In the case of the Goldberg Variations we are confronted with these all-emotional effects, and I’m also skeptical whether this all-embracing range can be touched by much too young players, on harpsichord as well as on piano. Knowing the true worth of this condensed and nearly welded-in polyphonic structure and singular musical architecture, one ultimately knows that it is impossible to play with the variations, meaning to change voices, or make doublings. Then the music itself would be robbed of its true worth and sense, which can only be revealed by bringing out the embedded simplicity, which however is transformed to an electrified, heated atmosphere. One has to respect the internal strength.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Art , Feeling , Home , Literature

“I want to warn young people who lend their ears to radicals and who play around with the music from Lusaka - they will end up inside the bear's fur coat, but they will no longer be able to live.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

At an election meeting in Pietermaritzburg on 30 April 1987, as cited by Andrew Donaldson, Sunday Times, 5 November 2006

People

“We live, and move, and have our being in a consumer cosmos. The global economy and interconnection of markets and resources means every time we eat a meal, listen to music, put on clothing, or read a book, we are being consumers.”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

Books , Time , Reading , Clothes

“Indian music is oriented solely to the end of divine communication. If I have done something in this respect entirely due to the grace of the Almighty who has chosen my humble self as a tool.”

M. S. Subbulakshmi (1916–2004) singer,Carnatic vocalist

Quoted in Ode to a Nightingale.[Sarada, M., The Complete Guide to Functional Writing in English, http://books.google.com/books?id=R--f51qlYrkC&pg=PA11, 1 October 2005, Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 978-81-207-2923-0, 11–12]

Communication

“The first step — especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money — the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Closing remarks made on an eClass forum (Barnes & Noble University) (2004-12-05)

Money , People , Books , World

“I think television's become a downright dangerous thing. It has no moral barometer whatsoever. If you want to talk about something that is all about money, just watch the television. It's damn dangerous. TV does not care about you or what happens to you. It's downright bad for your health now, and that's not a far-out concept. I think watching the TV news is bad for you. It is bad for your physical health and your mental health. The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Rolling Stone interview (2002)

Money , Health , Business , Thinking

“Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs —
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find
An echo in another’s mind.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Source: To Jane: The Invitation (1822), l. 21

Men , Soul

“If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion, and not a reality.”

Robert Craft (1923–2015) American conductor and writer

Down a Path of Wonder (2006)

Reality , Appearance

“Most people have music in the center of their lives. I believe my work sheds light on how music affects us and why it is so influential.”

Susan McClary (1946) American musicologist

from http://web.archive.org/20030225083736/www.ucla.edu/spotlight/archive/html_2001_2002/fac0502_mcclalry.html

People , Light

“Where do you hear the songs? In the space between wake and passing out, the hiss down the left of the dial, the faces of the kids when we pull up to the show, in answering machine hang up messages, in glasses colliding, transmissions whining, where the music doesn't belong—where it lives. Everywhere, it's all I hear.”

Jack Terricloth (1970)

What Would Jack Do?

“Art is about collecting experiences and expressing them. For me music and photography are similar art forms. I collect experiences, stir them in myself and express it in my own language. Just like my photography, music is my language.”

TY Bello Nigerian singer

Bio! TY Bello http://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/bio-ty-bello-id2789473.html

Art

“Photography is not an art. Neither is painting, nor sculpture, literature or music. They are only different media for the individual to express his aesthetic feelings... You do not have to be a painter or a sculptor to be an artist. You may be a shoemaker. You may be creative as such. And, if so, you are a greater artist than the majority of the painters whose work is shown in the art galleries of today.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

'Is Photography a Failure?', Alfred Stieglitz, 'Sun: 5.', March 14, 1922; as quoted on Wikipedia

Art , Feeling , Literature , Painting

“I make music all the time that no-one ever hears. Y' know, I sing in the shower, I hit on things. Music is life - life is music. Of all people, Nietzsche said 'Life without music is an error'. And so I'll be making music one way or another. Oh believe me, I make music.. I've made whole records that no-one heard. Oh they came out, no-one bought them! We used to do whole secret tours, we used to stand outside like 'We're playing tonight!”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

and only the bouncers and bartenders would see you. I'm used to it. I'm that tree that falls in the forest.
Clip for Studio4a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6SuvanvZFY&feature=related at youtube.com

Life , People , Secret , Way

“(Continued) The ironic thing is that my original goal in life was to be in a famous band, tour the world and sell millions of albums. Although that didn't quite happen, I got something else just as gratifying. Instead of being in a famous band, I gained some fame in the industry as a game composer. Instead of touring the world, I receive fan mail from around the world. Instead of selling millions of albums, my music is on millions of games! And I sell enough of my own albums that allows me to keep releasing them. So in a different way, I kind of got what I wanted after all. And I'm more than happy with that. The most fulfilling part of it is that I feel I contributed something that mattered to a significant number of people, and more importantly, I got to be a part of projects that mattered a lot to my life personally, like Star Wars!”

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

Gameplay magazine

Life , War , People , World

“Music combines the temporal aspects of film and dance with the spatial aspects of painting and sculpture, where pitch space (or frequency space) takes the place of three-dimensional physical space… frequency maps in the auditory cortex… function much the way that spatial maps do in the visual cortex.”

Daniel Levitin book The World in Six Songs

The World in Six Songs (2008)

Way , Dance , Painting

“I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That's no matter.) But warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Journal entry (14 October 1922), published in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927)

Life , Books , Feeling , Thinking

“The mysterious musicality, the organic intermarriage of its forms convex and concave, the high singing phrase of a straight line bordering a plane and its sudden dropping into a scarcely traceable curve, and feel deeply, sharply, the profound peace, the philosophy awakened by the even distribution of light and shade, wandering from one curved plane into a deep clarity of light, enriching a carefully carved stone plane. One will understand at once that those awakened sensation have nothing to do with anatomical considerations, exactitudes observed or not.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

n.p.
1960 - 1968, Plastic Language, Ossip Zadkine

Peace , Feeling , Understanding , Light

“She was one of those people who say "I don't know anything about music really, but I know what I like."”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. IX

People

“[T]he whole time I was having this conversation, I was mildy enjoying it, but it bothered me how little substance there was. I always feel this during movie and music conversations, that it's entirely constrainted to just naming things…Perhaps the greatest pain of it is how shallow it is compared to the actual experience.”

Why the lucky stiff American computer programmer

Collected PDFs (2013)

Pain , Feeling , Time

“Music is for sharing with people.”

Mixmaster Morris (1965) English ambient DJ

Looking for the Perfect Beat, 2000.

People

“Nobody wants to be dancing to political songs. Every bit of music out there that’s making it into the mainstream is really about nothing. I wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing. And it kind of worked.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Interview http://niralimagazine.com/2004/10/not-so-missing-in-action/ with Nirali magazine (October 2004)
Sourced quotes

Dance

“It is only in the case of musical instruments that I find any commendable diligence in the [Irish] people. They seem to me to be incomparably more skilled in these than any other people that I have seen. The movement is not, as in the British instrument to which we are accustomed, slow and easy, but rather quick and lively, while at the same time the melody is sweet and pleasant. It is remarkable how, in spite of the great speed of the fingers, the musical proportion is maintained. The melody is kept perfect and full with unimpaired art through everything – through quivering measures and the involved use of several instruments – with a rapidity that charms, a rhythmic pattern that is varied and a concord achieved through elements discordant.”
In musicis solum instrumentis commendabilem invenio gentis istius diligentiam. In quibus, prae omni natione quam vidimus, incomparabiliter instructa est. Non enim in his, sicut in Britannicis quibus assueti sumus instrumentis, tarda et morosa est modulatio, verum velox et praeceps, suavis tamen et jocunda sonoritas. Mirum quod, in tanta tam praecipiti digitorum rapacitate, musica servatur proportio; et arte per omnia indemni inter crispatos modulos, organaque multipliciter intricata, tam suavi velocitate, tam dispari paritate, tam discordi concordia, consona redditur et completur melodia.

Gerald of Wales (1146) Medieval clergyman and historian

Topographia Hibernica (The Topography of Ireland) Part 3, chapter 11 (94); translation from Gerald of Wales (trans. John J. O'Meara) The History and Topography of Ireland ([1951] 1982) p. 103.

People , Art , Time , Speed

“Mathematicians tells us that it is easy to invent mathematical theorems which are true, but that it is hard to find interesting ones. In analyzing music or writing its history, we meet the same difficulty, and it is compounded by another. For whom is it interesting? To paraphrase a famous remark of Barnett Newman, musicology is for musicians what ornithology is for the birds.”

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

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 3 : Explaining the Obvious

History , Mathematics , Bird

“We started out in the middle ages creating music which had certain desirable physical properties (for example, a major chord sounds "nice" because the frequencies are in integer ratios to each other). And then as society evolved, we created these emotional contexts for certain instruments and progressions. Major-chord arpeggios sound "happy", minor chords sound "sad", chromatic scales can sound "scary", et cetera. In the 20th century, film soundtracks reinforced this point as people associated certain kinds of music with certain visual and emotional experiences. It's a giant feedback loop, really; once you grow up in a given culture, it leaves this musical fingerprint on you which colors your experiences.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

People , Age , Sadness , Color

“All the information you need is available to you to have a successful career in music, if you're paying attention, and not closed off to anything. Remember, Perseverance is King.”

Bradley Joseph (1965) Composer, pianist, keyboardist, arranger, producer, recording artist

Indie Journal Interview http://web.archive.org/web/20041101084648/http://www.indiejournal.com/indiejournal/interviews/bradleyjoseph.htm

Success , Perseverance

“In the music of the morns
Blown through the Conchimarian horns,
Down the dark vistas of the reboantic Norns,
To the Genius of Eternity
Crying, “Come to me! Come to me!””

Thomas Holley Chivers (1809–1858) 19th century American poet

The Poet's Vacation.

Cry

“The only trouble is that there's absolutely no passion, no soul and no excitement to be found here…Yet all good music should provoke some sort of emotion, and this [Nine Million Bicycles] provokes none whatsoever.”

Katie Melua (1984) British singer-songwriter

John Murphy
[John Murphy, Nine Million Bicycles review, http://www.musicomh.com/singles5/katie-melua-3_0905.htm, musicOMH, 2005-09-19]
About

Soul , Passion

“It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive characteristic.”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

Black Manhattan, ch. 11 (1930).

“Rules of simultaneous ensemble constraint can't be assumed a priori to be the kinds of rules or rest on the same foundations as rules for constraint on succession. They may well be similar, but they may well not be similar also. It seems to me that ensemble constraints must first be understood in their own terms, within musical cultures individually and comparitively, looking to what appear to be basic principles in each in light of the others, I would call such a study "comparative counterpoint.”

Harold Powers (1928–2007) American academic

Harold Powers, "Language Models and Musical Analysis", p.39.

Study , Light , Appearance , Success

“…The music was evolving with society, and society, if you recall, there was a narcissism that entered society in the 80s. Saturday Night Fever, you know, hey! This whole LOOK, the LOOK about things, and the look almost became more important of the content…”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

On music and society in the 1980s, as quoted in "John McLaughlin: Challenges to creative music", by The Snapshots Foundation, YouTube, Nov 8, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iubDTkT3Y4

Night

““Music is a fine thing, but metal lasts.” He struck the table with two huge fingers to emphasize his point….
As I left, I thought about what Kilvin had said. It was the first thing he had said to me that I did not agree with wholeheartedly. Metal rusts, I thought, music lasts forever.
Time will eventually prove one of us right.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 60, “Fortune” (pp. 443-444; ellipsis represents minor elision of description)

Time

“She'll turn her music on you
You won't have to think twice
She's pure as New York snow
She's got Bette Davis eyes”

Jackie DeShannon (1941) American singer-songwriter

"Bette Davis Eyes" (1975); written with Donna Weiss

Thinking

“Now among the other things proper to recreate man and give him pleasure, music is either the first or one of the principal; and we must think that it is a gift of God deputed for that purpose.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Introduction, Geneva Psalter 1539.

God , Pleasure , Thinking

“The musical comedies of the month are She’s a Good Fellow and The Lady in Red, both of which owe their book and lyrics to Anne Caldwell—evidently a native of New York, judged by the casualness with which she rhymes “teacher” and “reach a.””

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 2: 1919, p. 82

Books , Teachers

“And if they legalize it, they're gonna have to regulate it and they're gonna have to put a warning on a box of joints. It's gonna have to say, "Surgeon General has determined this will make your music… awesome! Even Yanni. And if you think you liked cartoons before…"”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

Weapons of Self Destruction (2010)

Thinking , Box

“Historians of the future will amuse themselves by coming up with theories to explain why European civilization, at the height of its powers, rich with unparalleled achievements in science, music, art, literature, mathematics, and technology, gave up its lands and its treasures to people for whom those achievements were mere hated tokens of oppression or the impious and superfluous productions of infidels.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

Multiculturalism: When Will the Sleeper Wake? http://takimag.com/article/multiculturalism_when_will_the_sleeper_wake_john_derbyshire/print#ixzz3xOopVxdb, Taki's Magazine, March 29, 2012.

Hate , People , Art , Literature

“No. It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti have enough. Enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free—possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes—the wall, the wall!”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 7 (pp. 228-229)

Life , Women , Men , People

“It is much easier to prejudge than to judge. It saves a lot of work to write about all the intellectual baggage one brings to the work. It is harder, even somewhat daunting, to start from scratch with what one is actually hearing. Actually it is not easy at all to make judgements in this field without falling back on preconceived categories. Comparisons often come to the rescue. Stokowski’s Scheherazade is without question an extremely effective, almost magical, performance. If I’m reviewing that work I must know outstanding performances like Stokowski’s. And I must know why it’s outstanding—I must know it by listening to it, not merely by reputation. I must compare the newcomer to it to see if he manages to make as much of the music.”

Donald Vroon (1942) American music critic

Question

“I think [Britney Spears] is a perfect example of an artificial construct -- someone with a decent voice and a very marketable image, that producers and business people turned into a pop star. Unfortunately, I think it took a toll on her, mentally, and I feel bad for the trouble that success has brought onto her. However, her music is pretty disposable, and she doesn't have the intelligence and cultural impact of someone like, say, Madonna.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

People , Feeling , Star , Intelligence

“Wallace Hartley: “I’ve always felt that, when men are called to face death suddenly, music is are more effective in cheering them on than all the firearms in creation.””

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 194

Death , Men

“Look at why Jesus strictly avoided speaking the language of the theologians of his day. It’s plain to see what an enormous liberation there lies in hearing something about God in the words of poetry. Imagine that we would speak about God in the music of Mozart and Beethoven or in the pictures of van Gogh… It would be impossible to fight wars over the true faith in the Name of Mozart or van Gogh… The language of poetry, the parables of Jesus, is international. You can’t and mustn’t pour them into dogmas.”

Eugen Drewermann (1940) German psychologist and theologian

"Heil und Heilung - Theologie und Psychoanalyse," speech at a conference of therapists in Basel, Switzerland (1977-05-21)

God , War , Faith , Imagination

“There are so many elements flying in so many different directions that you really have to go with what feels like instinctively. The nature of the universe is fairly whimsical and nonsensical. In the most somber, beatific peacefulness there's complete chaos and maniacal laughter. I think music that doesn't reflect that is boring.”

Beck (1970) American Musician (b.1970)

Guitar magazine, January 1999

Peace , Feeling , Nature , Thinking

“The grand tune is the only thing in music that the great public really understands.”

Thomas Beecham (1879–1961) British conductor and impresario

Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 31-37 ISBN 0-575-04088-2

Understanding

“In my world, I would like to take as much positive vibrations as possible. The same goes for our music. I feel that there is a big impact.”

Kenneth Gärdestad (1948–2018) Swedish song lyricist, architect and lecturer

Regarding the connection between his fighting of his illness (skin cancer and lymphoma) and the brothers Gärdestad's music as quoted on Kenneth Gärdestad: "Blir sista stora hurraropet", Selåker, Johannes, Expressen.SE, published on 8 February 2018 (web) https://www.expressen.se/noje/kenneth-gardestad-jag-mar-samst/

World , Feeling

“I got a phone call from Ricky Martin's management asking me if I'd like to do something with him in Florida around the winter music conference. My answer is as follows: 'I would consider doing something with Ricky Martin if and only if he publicly apologizes for performing at George W's inauguration and if he confirms that when he danced next to George W. Bush at the inauguration he could smell brimstone and that George W. Bush is in fact the spawn of Satan. So if Ricky Martin goes on national television to confirm that George W. is the spawn of Satan then I will perform with him. Otherwise no deal. And only if we can do a cover of 'In a Gadda-da-vida', but The Simpsons version, 'In the garden of Eden' (to which reverend Lovejoy responds ""that sounds like rock and or roll""). And, by the way, I'm a pretty easygoing young-ish person, so if you ever see me walking down the street just stop me and say hello. We're all in the same boat, right? of course you'll have to make it past my phalanx of security guards who are all ex-NFL linebackers, and the cadre of dobermans, and the perma-moat that I wear that's filled with electric eels and vicious sea monkeys. So if you see me just come and say hi. I'm normal.”

Moby (1965) Activist, American musician, DJ and photographer

"predictions" http://www.moby.com/journal/2001-02-15/predictions.html, journal entry (15 February 2001) at Moby's website, moby.com http://www.moby.com/

Way , Winter , Past , Dance

“The opposition between structure and sonority in music is almost as misleading as that between line and color in the visual arts. Baudelaire insisted, correctly, that Delacroix was one of the three greatest draftsmen of the century, and emphasized his mastery of line. In the same way, a study of Chopin demonstrates the intimate relation between line and color in music.”

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

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 7 : Chopin: From the Miniature Genre to the Sublime Style

Art , Color , Way , Study

“I hate you, I hate you!' cried Madeline, a thing I didn't know anyone ever said except in the second act of a musical comedy.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963)

Hate

“Mathematics have a triple aim. They must furnish an instrument for the study of nature. But that is not all: they have a philosophic aim and, I dare maintain, an esthetic aim. They must aid the philosopher to fathom the notions of number, of space, of time. And above all, their adepts find therein delights analogous to those given by painting and music. They admire the delicate harmony of numbers and forms; they marvel when a new discovery opens to them an unexpected perspective; and has not the joy they thus feel the esthetic character, even though the senses take no part therein? Only a privileged few are called to enjoy it fully, it is true, but is not this the case for all the noblest arts?
This is why I do not hesitate to say that mathematics deserve to be cultivated for their own sake, and the theories inapplicable to physics as well as the others. Even if the physical aim and the esthetic aim were not united, we ought not to sacrifice either.”

Henri Poincaré book The Value of Science

Source: The Value of Science (1905), Ch. 5: Analysis and Physics

Art , Feeling , Mathematics , Nature

“To approach Chopin, you have to separate him completely from Schumann. Schumann admired Chopin very much and saw him as friend, but - what only few people know - Chopin himself had much less interest in and esteem for Schumann. In detail: Schumann’s works follow on from a transitional period determined by the successors of Viennese Classicism, particularly Beethoven. Just as the sons of Bach espoused the ‘galant,’ ornamented style of their generation, so the pupils of Mozart and Beethoven - Hummel, Ries, Czerny, Moscheles - took pains to compensate for a thinner musical substance with increased instrumental brilliance and thus prepared the ground for the golden age of the piano and the era of the Romantic virtuoso. Among the multitude of composers writing for the piano at that time, only two - Weber and Schubert - stand out as original creative forces.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Pain , People , Age , Time

“We made music seated on the grass of Brasilia's super-squares, at home, at college. It was a creative time, more ingenuous, when the people amused more themselves, played more.”

Kátya Chamma (1961) Brazilian singer and writer

Source: Interview at Recanto das Letras http://recantodasletras.com.br/entrevistas/625556, 2007.

People , Home , Grass , Time

“From the start, the prose in my Hank books copied the storytelling techniques of ranchers and cowboys, which means it was heavily influenced by an oral tradition. It was a natural and easy step to move from reading my stories aloud to audiences in Perryton, to recording them in a studio in Amarillo. The Hank audios have the feel of the radio programs I listened to in the fifties: character voices, background music, and sound effects.”

John R. Erickson (1942) American author

John R. Erickson on the discipline of writing, the world of publishing, and (of course) dogs http://www.lonestarliterary.com/john-r.-erickson-061415.html (June 14, 2015)

Books , Feeling , Nature , Reading