Quotes about music (3423 quotes, page 20)

“Consider your state of mind—your consciousness—before going to sleep. This is extremely important. Make a commitment to spend at least fifteen minutes spiritualizing your consciousness before going to bed. Read something spiritual, listen to spiritual discourse or music, or engage in discussion on a spiritual topic. Push aside the chaos and confusion that were a part of your day, and focus on spiritual reality. In this way, you will prepare yourself for the next six to eight hours of sleep. If you allow yourself to focus spiritually, you will provide less of an opportunity for negative elements to enter your dreams. You can then benefit most from your sleeping state.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 24

Dreams , Way , Reality , Sleep

“Basically I just had to say, "Screw everyone around me - from now on I'm just gonna play what I think is important to me and our music." So I gave the big finger to all the current trends in technical wizardry, and just went off and did what I felt was best for the songs.”

Kirk Hammett (1962) American musician

Guitar World (March 1992)

Thinking

“That's why I do this music business thing, it's communication with people without having the extreme inconvenience of actually phoning anybody up.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From the TV documentary The Importance of Being Morrissey (2003)
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

People , Communication , Business

“As soon as I came to England, really, I must have about spent two or three months bouncing around the pop world trying to get an idea of what England was. I wasn't really motivated by anything else. And nothing really inspired me. I was really confused about who I was and where I stood in society, you know what I mean? You come there and you just don't know what the hell is going on. And then I remember the first house we stayed in and I watched 'Top of the Pops' and it was like- woah! It was the first music show that I saw on TV. I saw Madonna, Whitney Houston. It was amazing”

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

Interview http://www.desiclub.com/desimusic/desimusic_features/music_article.cfm?id=202 (2006)
Sourced quotes

World , Motivation , Idea , Hell

“Attending this new version, I felt oddly as if I were watching a provincial stock company doing the best it could without the Broadway cast. I was reminded of the child prodigy who was summoned to perform for a famous pianist. The child climbed onto the piano stool and played something by Chopin with great speed and accuracy. The great musician then patted the child on the head and said, 'You can play the notes. Someday, you may be able to play the music.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/psycho-1998 of Psycho (6 December 1998)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Speed

“Listen to them. Children of the night, what music they make.”

Garrett Fort (1900–1945) screenwriter

Dracula, in his castle, when he hears wolves howling
Dracula (1931)

Children , Night

“Music has no limits of a life-span.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Yonder Mark (ed.), The Quotable Gordimer, 2014.

Life

“Musical novelty attracts attention and overcomes boredom, increasing memorability.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

“Most musical of mourners, weep again!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. IV
Adonais (1821)

“At the upcoming Grammy Awards, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony will perform together as the first time, as man and wife. Hopefully music.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

citation needed

Time

“My poem (Love -Kisses XL1) is like a nugget of gold or clump of earth it contains within itself the seeds rhetoric, ethics, philosophy, mathematics, geography, music, astronomy, medicine, nature, law, writing”

Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651–1689) German poet and mystic

Love-Kiss XL1

Love , Law , Mathematics , Kiss

“Music was his life, it was not his livelihood,
And it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.
And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul.
He did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Mr. Tanner
Song lyrics, Short Stories (1974)

Life , Feeling , Soul , Heart

“As I opened the door — I heard cattle — many — in the pens over by the track — lowing — I wonder if you ever heard a whole lot of cattle lowing — it sounds different here — too — just ground and sky — and the lowing cattle — you hardly see — either them or the pens — the pens are of weather beaten boards — take on the color of the ground it seems — I like it and I don't like it — its like music — I made up a tune this morning — Well — I heard the cattle — as I opened the door — and I liked it and I didn't liked it — then I read your letter as I walked to breakfast — a great letter — Anita”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas, (November, 1916), p. 216
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Color , Reading , Weather

“On Charley Patton's voice and music style: I heard this fella, and his voice sounded like my voice. I’d always thought, ‘Well, I could never be a singer with this horrible voice’. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. Still do. But he sounded like the same kind of thing. I didn’t know black American terms: a boll weevil or turnpike blues. But there was an emotion that clicked with me. I became fascinated with gospel blues. I still play more gospel than Chicago. I very rarely go anywhere near that speed, aggression, Clapton thing. Someone once reviewed me, saying the testosterone was missing from my blues solos, because I don’t do Chicago. It’s just alien to me.”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2015

Hate , Speed

“Now that to me is lovely music. Really, that type of thing really moves me. This, of course, is Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro, and Paul Motian…. Even Scott's playing on this particular album should disprove all the "naughty" things people said about him, about his being too active, getting in people's way; because the one thing about Scotty, with all his technique, was that he had a perceptivity, which let him use it judiciously. He started this record by playing on the first beat of every bar. He wasn't even playing in two, and any man who has that much technique, who knows where to limit himself, to me, is just great. And of course Bill plays lovely on the thing. That's another five-star.”

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

Reviewing a "live recording https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-jsW61e_-w of the Bill Evans Trio performing "My Foolish Heart," from the album Waltz for Debby; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe by Leonard Feather, in Downbeat (October 25, 1962), p. 39

Love , People , Way , Star

“The closer I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets.”

Billy Corgan (1967) American musician, songwriter, producer, and author

Smashing Pumpkins (1996)

“My generation comes from a world that has been molded by crass TV programs, movies, comic books, popular music, advertisements and commercials. My brain is a huge garbage dump of all this stuff and it is this, mainly, that my work comes out of, for better or for worse. I hope that whatever synthesis I make of all this crap contains something worthwhile, that it's something other than just more smarmy entertainment—or at least, that it's genuine high quality entertainment. I also hope that perhaps it's revealing of something, maybe. On the other hand, I want to avoid becoming pretentious in the eagerness to give my work deep meanings! I have an enormous ego and must resist the urge to come on like a know-it-all. Some of the imagery in my work is sorta scary because I'm basically a fearful, pessimistic person. I'm always seeing the predatory nature of the universe, which can harm you or kill you very easily and very quickly, no matter how well you watch your step. The way I see it, we are all just so much chopped liver. We have this great gift of human intelligence to help us pick our way through this treacherous tangle, but unfortunately we don't seem to value it very much. Most of us are not brought up in environments that encourage us to appreciate and cultivate our intelligence. To me, human society appears mostly to be a living nightmare of ignorant, depraved behavior. We're all depraved, me included. I can't help it if my work reflects this sordid view of the world. Also, I feel that I have to counteract all the lame, hero-worshipping crap that is dished out by the mass-media in a never-ending deluge.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 363

Books , World , Fear , Hope

“I have gone through different phases in my music writing. There was a time when I used a little exercise — incorporating all of the twelve notes in the chromatic scale — to get me going. I used this technique for a while, but I don't any longer because I am going back to simpler melodies. Originally I moved away from the simple songs because I thought they were too simple.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

"Songwriting" in Making Music (1983) edited by George Martin, p. 70

Exercises , Time

“If I choose to impose individual blame for all past social ills, there will be no one left to like in some of the most fascinating periods of our history. For example […] if I place every Victorian anti-Semite beyond the pale of my attention, my compass of available music and literature will be pitifully small. Though I hold no shred of sympathy for active persecution, I cannot excoriate individuals who acquiesced passively in a standard societal judgment. Rail instead against the judgment, and try to understand what motivates men of decent will.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"The Moral State of Tahiti—and of Darwin", p. 269
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Men , History , Literature , Motivation

“Languages, literature, art, music, history: are all self-evident helps - and even mathematics and sciences, by training memory and demanding the analytical approach, are helpful by indirection.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

If You Want Success (Screenland Interview) (1961)

Art , History , Literature , Mathematics

“Human paint, produce films and videos; they dance, dream and make music; they engage in political action, exchange goods, perform rituals, build houses start wars, act in plays, try to please patrons- and so on… They contain patterns, press the practitioners to "conform" and in this way mold their thought, their perception, their actions, and their discriminative abilities.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

pg 28.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

War , Dreams , Way , Dance

“Music falls on the silence like a sense,
A passion that we feel, not understand.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

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

Feeling , Understanding , Sense , Silence

“[Bai Juyi] utilized Confucianism to order his conduct, utilized Buddhism to cleanse his mind, and then utilized history, paintings, mountains, rivers, wine, music and song to soothe his spirit.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

Composition for his own tomb inscription, as quoted in Lin Yutang's The Importance of Living (1940), p. 411

History , Mountain , Wine , Painting

“From his entrance, in medias rape, Vytas Juozapaitis had a compelling presence as both seductive and dangerous Don Juan. He had a dash, swagger, a sense of humour, and a strong, lustrous voice. He's a good actor too. You believed both in the way he was driven by his carnality and in his self possession. In short, he embodied the music.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Lloyd Schwartz, "Teatro Lirico's fire breathing Don Giovanni". Boston Phoenix (October, 2003)

Way , Sense , Strong

“Sound is all our dreams of music. Noise is music's dreams of us.”

Morton Feldman (1926–1987) American avant-garde composer

Sound Noise Varese Boulez, in Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music http://books.google.pl/books?id=FgDgCOSHPysC&pg=PA16&lpg=PA15&focus=viewport, edited by Christoph Cox, Daniel Warner. A&C Black, 2004. p. 16 http://books.google.pl/books?id=FgDgCOSHPysC&pg=PA16&lpg=PA15&focus=viewport.

Dreams

“Some one wrote to me upon the publication of my book two years ago: “But you live in England! Poor man: then you are a preacher in the desert!” So I am. But I owe something to my desert. The desert is an excellent place for anybody who can make use of it, as biblical and post-biblical experience proves. Without my desert I should not have written my book. Without coming to England I should have become a modern creature, going in for money and motor-cars. For I was born with a fatal inclination for such lighter and brighter kind of things. I was born under a lucky star, so to say: I was born with a warm heart and a happy disposition; I was born to play a good figure in one of those delightful fêtes champêtres of Watteau, Lancret, and Boucher, with a nice little shepherdess on my arm, listening to the sweet music of Rossini and drinking the inspiring “Capri bianco” or “Verona soave” of that beautiful country Italy. But the sky over here is not blue—nor grows there any wine in England—and no Rossini ever lived here; and towards the native shepherdesses I adopted the ways of the Christian towards his beautiful ideals: I admired them intensely but kept myself afar. So there was nothing to console your thirsty and disenchanted traveller in the British Sahara. In the depths of his despair, there was sent to him, as to the traveller in the desert, an enchanting vision, a beautiful fata Morgana rising on the horizon of the future, a fertile and promising Canaan of a new creed that had arisen in Germany (there too as a revulsion against the desert): the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
So I owe something to the desert. Had I not wandered there so long, I could never have fervently wished to escape nor finally succeeded in coming out of it.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Preface, pp. xii-xiii.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

Money , Books , Beauty , Cars

“…Another highlight of the festival was the performance of the Alchemy Trio in the Tempel Synagogue. That's a great cracovian cellist Dorota Imiełowska with accordion wizard Konrad Ligas and equally sensational bassist Roman Ślazyk. With musicians performed 16-year-old Łukasz Pawlikowski of which can confidently say that he has joined the ranks of the best Polish cellists. Jewish music they played (even in their own arrangement) enchanted, deeply touched and amused, because this music is not only an emotional but also full of humor. It was not just a concert - artists presented musical and theatrical spectacle. Excellent!”

Łukasz Pawlikowski (1997) Polish cellist

...Kolejnym wydarzeniem festiwalu był występ Alchemy Trio w Synagodze Tempel. To znakomita krakowska wiolonczelistka Dorota Imiełowska z czarodziejem akordeonu Konradem Ligasem i równie rewelacyjnym kontrabasistą Romanem Ślazykiem. Z muzykami wystapił 16-letni Łukasz Pawlikowski, o którym śmiało można powiedzieć, że już dołączył do grona najlepszych polskich wiolonczelistów. Muzyka żydowska, którą grali / również we własnej aranżacji/ zachwycała, wzruszała i bawiła, bo to muzyka nie tylko niezwykle emocjonalna, ale i pełna humoru. To był nie tylko koncert - artyści zaprezentowali spektakl muzyczno-teatralny. Rewelacja!
[Beata Penderecka, http://www.radiokrakow.pl/www/index.nsf/ID/BPEA-9AZLHZ, Cellos on Music in Old Cracow, Radio Kraków, 2013-28-08, Polish]
About

Confidence

“What particularly attracted me [in his painting 'Still-life with Musical instruments', 1908 – 1909].... was the materialization of this new space that I felt to be in the offing. So I began to concentrate on still-life's, because in the still-life you have a tactile, I might almost say a manual space... This answered to the hankering I have always had to touch things and not merely see them. It was this space that particularly attracted me, for this was the first concern of Cubism, the investigation of space.... In tactile space you measure the distance separating you from the object, whereas in visual space you measure the distance separating things from each other. This is what led me, long ago, from landscape to still-life.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: posthumous quotes, Braque', (1968), p. 41

Life , Painting

“The argument is that there may be a cluster of genes that influences both outgoingness and musicality. If this were true, we would expect to find that deviations in one ability co-occur with deviations in the other, as we do in WS and ASD.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

“But just as the world grew right again,
We heard a wanderer out on the plain
Singing what none of us understood;
Yet we thought that the world grew thrice more sweet
And the meadows were blossoming under his feet.
And we felt a grand and beautiful fear,
For we knew that a marvellous thought drew near;
So we kept the glass for a little while:
And the skies grew deeper and twice as bright,
And the seas grew soft as a flower of light,
And the meadows rippled from stile to stile;
And memories danced in a musical throng
Thro' the blossom that scented the wonderful song.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Part III : The Mystic Ruby
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan

World , Fear , Beauty , Flowers

“First of all I choose a raga that gives me musical satisfaction. When I choose that raga then I welcome and invite the raga. To do that I have to meditate on the raga to understand its structure. When I get the structure then I can enjoy playing it. When I play a few beautiful notes, the spirit of the raga feels happy and comes and blesses me. Then the real music comes.”

Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938) Indian bansuri player

On playing a raga.
Music is a Prayer:An interview with Hariprasad Chaurasia by Ian Gottstein

Beauty , Feeling , Understanding , Happiness

“It (synthesizers and drum machines) has contributed greatly (to an 'antiseptic' sound). And the fact is, when I look back on the last few years I really can't remember that much of the music, such is its lasting effect. I think it's instantly forgettable and it horrifies me in many respects. It's so sterile and non-human. I don't understand why people play non-human music. It really mystifies me when we're human beings. It's strange. I hate it.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From a radio interview with David Jensen in 1983
In interviews etc., About pop culture

Hate , People , Understanding , Thinking

“Before the wonderful, terrible wrestling with words and music there is the state of mind I'm calling 'poetic attention' … a sort of readiness … a form of knowing.”

Don McKay (1942) Canadian poet

Baler Twine

“And, (relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley) walked (pinch-hitter Mike Davis) … and look who's comin' up!
(36 seconds of crowd cheering)
All year long, they looked to him to light the fire, and all year long, he answered the demands, until he was physically unable to start tonight—with two bad legs: the bad left hamstring, and the swollen right knee. And, with two out, you talk about a roll of the dice … this is it. If he hits the ball on the ground, I would imagine he would be running 50 percent to first base. So, the Dodgers trying to catch lightning right now!
Fouled away.
He was, you know, complaining about the fact that, with the left knee bothering him, he can't push off. Well, now, he can't push off and he can't land. … 4-3 A's, two out, ninth inning, not a bad opening act!
Mike Davis, by the way, has stolen 7 out of 10, if you're wondering about Lasorda throwing the dice again. 0-and-1.
Fouled away again. … 0-and-2 to Gibson, the infield is back, with two out and Davis at first. Now Gibson, during the year, not necessarily in this spot, but he was a threat to bunt. No way tonight, no wheels.
No balls, two strikes, two out.
Little nubber … foul—and, it had to be an effort to run that far. Gibson was so banged up, he was not introduced; he did not come out onto the field before the game. … It's one thing to favor one leg, but you can't favor two. 0-and-2 to Gibson.
Ball one. And, a throw down to first, Davis just did get back. Good play by Ron Hassey using Gibson as a screen; he took a shot at the runner, and Mike Davis didn't see it for that split-second and that made it close.
There goes Davis, and it's fouled away! So, Mike Davis, who had stolen 7 out of 10, and carrying the tying run, was on the move.
Gibson, shaking his left leg, making it quiver, like a horse trying to get rid of a troublesome fly. 2-and-2! … Tony LaRussa is one out away from win number one. … two balls and two strikes, with two out.
There he goes! Wa-a-ay outside, he's stolen it! … So, Mike Davis, the tying run, is at second base with two out. Now, the Dodgers don't need the muscle of Gibson, as much as a base hit, and on deck is the lead-off man, Steve Sax. 3-and-2. Sax waiting on deck, but the game right now is at the plate.
High fly ball into right field, she i-i-i-is gone!!
(67 seconds of cheering and organ music)
In a year that has been so improbable … the impossible has happened!
And, now, the only question was, could he make it around the base paths unassisted?!
You know, I said it once before, a few days ago, that Kirk Gibson was not the Most Valuable Player; that the Most Valuable Player for the Dodgers was Tinkerbell. But, tonight, I think Tinkerbell backed off for Kirk Gibson. And, look at Eckersley—shocked to his toes!
They are going wild at Dodger Stadium—no one wants to leave!”

Vin Scully (1927) American sports broadcaster

Kirk Gibson's World Series-game-winning home run, October 15, 1988, transcribed from mlb.com archives <nowiki>[</nowiki>excising comments by color commentator Joe Garagiola]

Way , Imagination , Game , Question

“To Namier it had seemed obvious that political theories act as the merest ex post facto rationalisations of political behaviour. If we are looking for explanations of political action, he maintained, we must seek them at the level of ‘the underlying emotions, the music, to which ideas are a mere libretto, often of very inferior quality’. For critics of Namier such as Sir Herbert Butterfield, the only possible retort seemed to be to go back to a famous dictum of Lord Acton’s to the effect that ideas are often the causes rather than the effects of public events. But this response duly incurred the scorn of Namier and his followers for the alleged naiveté of supposing that political actions are ever genuinely motivated by the principles used to rationalise them.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Source: Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), p. 104

Motivation , Idea

“I've now got the music book ready,
Do sit up and sing like a lady
A recitative from Tancredi,
And something about "Palpiti!"
Sing forte when first you begin it,
Piano the very next minute,
They'll cry "What expression there's in it!"”

Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797–1839) English poet, songwriter, dramatist, and writer

Don't sing English ballads to me!
Don't Sing English Ballads to Me; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 56.

Books , Singing , Cry

“Whether it be in the toleration of sharia courts, or the turning of a blind eye to cultural practices which go against our laws, too often it has been women who have been the victims of those problems. I have always believed that a multi-ethnic society such as ours can be successful if it can be united by a common set of values and sense of identity, instead of a constant emphasis on division. It’s amazing to think that this was once considered outlandish. It can be difficult to explain this crucial difference in a city like London. More than one TV interviewer has asked me how, as UKIP’s Mayoral candidate, I can appeal to such a multicultural place as our capital. But this is to miss the point entirely. Like anybody else, I enjoy the huge profusion of completely diverse cuisine, fashion and music. Indeed the different cultural influences on our city are so big and ingrained it’s easy to take them for granted. But this is not the same thing as ensuring and, indeed, standing up for the common values and laws which should and must underpin any cohesive society. Here, as across Europe, one of those values – enshrined in our legal system – is that everybody is equal before the law regardless of their gender, sexuality or ethnicity.”

Peter Whittle (politician) (1961) British author, politician, and journalist

‘Cultural Cringe’: Women Are The First Victims Of State-Sponsored Multiculturalism http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/13/2764329/ (January 13, 2016)

Women , Law , Fashion , Problem

“If…[Alban] Berg departs so radically from tradition, through his substitution of a symmetrical partitioning of the octave for the asymmetrical partitionings of the major/minor system, he departs just as radically from the twelve-tone tradition that is represented in the music of Schoenberg and Webern, for whom the twelve-tone series was always an integral structure that could be transposed only as a unit, and for whom twelve-tone music always implied a constant and equivalent circulation of the totality of pitch classes.”

George Perle (1915–2009) American composer

Page 98
See: Common practice period, Twelve-tone technique
The Listening Composer

“The music of the people is like a rare and lovely flower growing amidst encroaching weeds. Thousands pass it, while others trample it under foot, and thus the chances are that it will perish before it is seen by the one discriminating spirit who will prize it above all else. The fact that no one has as yet arisen to make the most of it does not prove that nothing is there.”

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) Czech composer

"Music in America", Harper's Monthly Magazine, February 1895.

Love , People , Flowers , Chance

“Compilations, to me, are embarrassing. To bring out a compilation, to me, is to say, "Look. I've got no new material so please buy this. I need money to pay the rent." I think it's very embarrassing. And that is very annoying because the record company owns all those titles and they don't ask me for my advice. They just decide to release "the best of" compilations and they put out a lot of very bad quality music. There are a couple of good titles but the rest are just tracks to fill out the album. And they know very well that they can't rely on me promoting them because I won't promote such records.”

Amanda Lear (1939) singer, lyricist, composer, painter, television presenter, actress, model

http://amandalear_jukebox.tripod.com/indexnight_inteview.htm, NIGHT interview, Robert Henry Rubin, 2002, NIGHT, amandalear_jukebox.tripod.com, 1 June 2007

Money , Thinking

“I have always been interested in family history. Chromosomes are funny things, aren't they? They may skip a generation and you can find children who resemble the grandfather, rather than either parent. Heredity is more important than environment. Blood will tell. For example, a man is either musical by heredity or he is not. You can't make a man musical by the environment. You can find a person who is very musically inclined and be puzzled because neither parents nor grandparents had any ear for music. But if you trace it back, you will find that the great-grandfather was a musician. But the environment plays a great part in the development of a man. It is significant whether a man is brought up in the city or in the country, near a lake or on the shores of the ocean.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (21 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

Children , Family , History , Parent

“music's power
Is little felt in sunlit hour;
But hear its voice when hopes depart,
Like swallows, flying from the heart
On which the summer's late decline
Has set a sadness and a sign;......
How deeply will the spirit feel
The lute, the song's sweet-voiced appeal;
And how the heart drink in their sighs
As echoes they from Paradise.”

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

Canto IV
The Troubadour (1825)

Sadness , Hope , Feeling , Drink

Paz de la Huerta (1984) American actress

HBO interview http://www.hbo.com/boardwalk-empire/inside/cast-interviews/interview/paz-de-la-huerta.html

Life , Feeling , Time

“I do promotion when it is necessary … But I always want to get back to the music. The personal appearances and red carpet events are very glitzy, but it's a bit false.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

The Telegraph interview (2005)

Appearance , Personality , Falseness

“In the future (…) people will become more sensitive and aware than they are now. They will have to, because society will become more complicated, more full of people, with more different things happening. People will have to become much cleverer and much sharper. Then they will like my music.”

Elliott Carter (1908–2012) American composer

From the documentary A Labyrinth of Time (2004) by Frank Scheffer.

People , Future

“The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.”

John Stuart Mill book Utilitarianism

Source: Utilitarianism (1861), Ch. 1

Pleasure , Art

“If music is haraam then why has it reached such heights? Why does music make me to soar towards heaven? The religion of music is one; all other are different. I tell the Mullas that this is the only haqeeqat (reality). This is my world. My Namaaz is the seven ‘sudh’ [pure] and five ‘komal’ [soft] surs”

Bismillah Khan (1916–2006) Indian musician

His reply to the hardliner Shia mullas who wanted to ban music.
Quote, Power Profiles

World , Religion , Reality

“The music that can deepest reach,
And cure all ill, is cordial speech.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Merlin's Song II
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

“You're not supposed to say the word "cancer" in a song.
And tellin' folks Jesus is the answer can rub 'em wrong.
It ain't hip to sing about tractors, trucks, little towns, and mama, yeah that might be true.
But this is country music and we do.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

This Is Country Music, written by Brad Paisley and Chris DuBois.
Song lyrics, This Is Country Music (2011)

Singing , Country

“The basic purpose of music is to be therapeutic, to raise the life energy of the listener. This simple yet profound truth seems to have been forgotten in this era which acclaims technical virtuosity and sophisticated musicology. The function of music since its beginning has been the spiritual uplifting of the listener so that his life energy is enhanced by the experience.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: The Life Energy in Music, Vol. 1 (1981), p. 7

Life , Truth

“We've had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is "stolen."”

Steve Ballmer (1956) American businessman who was the chief executive officer of Microsoft

[John, Lettice, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/07/ballmer_doesnt_get_it/, Love DRM or my family starves: why Steve Ballmer doesn't Get It, Software, The Register, 7 October 2004, 2007-04-20]
2000s

“I am an easy going person. I don't sing for money or fame. I was brought up in an environment where I was taught to love and respect music, not consider it a business.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

Opinion about music http://www.hindustantimes.com/music/i-don-t-sing-for-money-or-fame-shreya-ghoshal/story-8vgJ5F1u77DfpVBcTF8R2J.html - Archived http://web.archive.org/web/20170307222836/http://www.hindustantimes.com/music/i-don-t-sing-for-money-or-fame-shreya-ghoshal/story-8vgJ5F1u77DfpVBcTF8R2J.html

Love , Money , Business , Singing

“I started playing music when I was really young. I didn't start off on guitar because I couldn't fit my hands around the neck and fret board. So I did the drums. And back then, all I did was hit things.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

TV.com
Source: http://www.tv.com/patrick-stump/person/412086/summary.html TV.com Patrick Stump.

“If there was ever an action movie that didn't warrant a sequel, it's Speed. However, the film grossed enough money to be numbered among the big summer hits of 1994, and the unfortunate result is this film, which reunites director Jan de Bont with leading lady Sandra Bullock, while leaving Keanu Reeves somewhere safe and dry, "working on his music" with his band, Dogstar. Considering the dubious quality of the final product, this may be the wisest decision of the young actor's career. Speed 2 can be numbered among the worst second chapters ever made.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=291 of Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997).
One-and-a-half star reviews

Money , Decision , Summer , Speed

“Request Magazine: And now we're back to suicide. Some months have passed now since Kurt [Cobain] killed himself. Judging from his suicide note, it seems as if he thought there was something that was being demanded of him by the music industry or fans or someone, that he either couldn't or didn't want to deliver.
Cornell: I wouldn't even bother trying to guess. I'm not going to understand it no matter how hard I try. I understand being suicidal, but not for the reasons that I ever would be, and it would likely have nothing to do with anybody else. Therefore, it just becomes a waste of time. I don't really think its going to help anything for people to sit around and theorize how this guy who really didn't talk much to anybody felt or why he did what he did. Maybe it had nothing to do with anything. Maybe it was just a smoke screen. Somebody who is going to be taking a lot of drugs and is going to be suicidal, you can bet there's going to be lots of smoke screens. Or maybe that's entirely what it was. We'll never know.”

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

Interview with Request Magazine, October 1994 http://web.stargate.net/soundgarden/articles/request_10-94.shtml,
On depression and suicide

People , Guy , Understanding , Thinking

“That heavenly music! what is it I hear?
The notes of the harpers ring sweet in mine ear.
And, see, soft unfolding those portals of gold,
The King all arrayed in his beauty behold!”

William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796–1877) United States Anglican Episcopal clergyman

I would not live alway (published 1826), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Beauty

“When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Source: Pensées Philosophiques (1746), Ch. 3, as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker

Goodbye , Age , Painting

“I object to background music no matter how good it is. Composers want people to listen to their music, they don't want them doing something else while their music is on. I'd like to get the guy who sold all those big businessmen the idea of putting music in the elevators, for he was really clever. What on earth good does it do anybody to hear those four or eight bars while going up a few flights.”

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

Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812.

People , Guy , Idea

“I've never been comfortable working live, and I'm still not. I was always more music-oriented and less star-oriented, which is why I've never been comfortable on big stages in big halls.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

An Oral History of Popular Music (1989)

Star

“The very being of music is created by cognitive attributions made by individual perceiving or conceiving imaginers, in individual acts of perceiving or conceiving--that, in fact, the only real music 'theory' IS the creative-intellectual transaction which ontologizes music itself.”

Benjamin Boretz (1934) American composer

from Meta-Variations: studies in the foundations of musical thought Red Hook, N.Y. : Open Space, 1995.

Imagination

“And whatever we find on Mars, the doors will be open to the next Odyssey, to something so many have instinctually felt for so long, something which through music I remember -- that at the dawn of creation the seeds of life were likely scattered far and wide across the endless skies, and that science will continue to show us how we are connected, no different than the universe itself.”

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

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/vangelis01.html
Vangelis: Mythodea
2001
NASA
2001

Life , Universe , Science

“My parents danced together, her head on his chest. Both had their eyes closed. They seemed so perfectly content. If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you’re lucky. Even if it only lasts for a minute or a day. The image of them gently swaying to the music is how I picture love in my mind even after all these years.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 15, “Distractions and Farewells” (pp. 119-120)

Love , World , Parent , Dance

“The secret to life is, you get up in the morning, and you go to work.”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

From the book Travelling Music
Other

Life , Travel , Books , Secret

“It certainly must be an immense pleasure to God to see a man work patiently for nothing. It must please the Most High to see a slave with his wife and child sold upon the auction block. If this slave escapes from slavery and is pursued, how musical the baying of the bloodhound must be to the ears of this most merciful God. All this is simply infamous. On the throne of this universe there sits no such monster.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

God , Pleasure , Universe

“When you are under the control of a label, you don't always get to have the sound you like. If I could change it, I would, and it would sound [less pop]. My name is Hilary Duff, and I don't know why I don't get to make Hilary Duff music. I just have to get the freedom to do it, and during the show, I do get to do that: I get to throw away all of the CD stuff that has been mastered and sounds really pretty, and I get to sing live.”

Hilary Duff (1987) American actress and singer

DeRogatis, Jim. "Is She for Real?" http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20050719/ai_n14877317. Chicago Sun-Times. July 19 2005. Retrieved October 25 2006.

Freedom , Change , Singing

“Have you never seen human beings acting in a mob-frenzy? Have you never seen a religious rite that tipped people over the edge? Did you not see footage of the rock-and-roll music concerts they have in America?”

Adam Roberts book Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea

Source: Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (2014), Chapter 14, “Confinement” (p. 131)

People

“Kandinsky understood 'form' as a form, like an object in the real world; and a object, he said, was a narrative – and so, of course, he disapproved of it. He wanted ‘his music without words’. He wanted to be 'simple as a child'. He intended, with his 'inner-self' to rid himself of 'philosophical barricades' (he sat down and wrote something about all this). But in turn his own writing has become a philosophical barricade, even it is a barricade full of holes. It offers a kind of Middle European idea of Buddhism or, anyhow, something too theosophical for me.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

De Kooning's speech 'What Abstract Art means to me' on the symposium 'What is Abstract At' - at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 5 February, 1951, n.p.
1950's

World , Idea

“I would love to be Jack White — or maybe I want the people who like Jack White to also like me. But I”m the guy who writes beautiful music at 85 beat per minute.”

Jack White (1975) American musician and record producer

John Mayer
Eells, Josh (June 21, 2012). "John Mayers Regrets." Rolling Stone. 1159:48-53
About

Love , Guy

“[paintings as] the plastic equivalent of the sounds, noises and smells found in theaters, music-halls, cinemas, brothels, railways station, ports.”

Carlo Carrà (1881–1966) Italian painter

1910's
Source: 'Piani plastici come espanzione sferica nello spazio', Carrà, March 1913

Painting

“I have the greatest respect for the survivors of the Holocaust. We can't even imagine what these people went through. And yet even they have differing positions … I respect that there are survivors who can't, and certainly don't want to, listen to this music. But I don't accept that the fact that an orchestra playing Wagner in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem would do any harm to someone sitting in an apartment in Haifa.”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

SPIEGEL Interview with Daniel Barenboim

People , Imagination

“A good deal of classical music is, today, the opium of the good citizen.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"Tomorrow".
In Bluebeard's Castle (1971)

“Music, and mood, she loves, but love she hates
(As curious ladies do, their public cates),
This train, with meteors, comets, lightenings,
The dreadful presence of our empress sings:
Which grant for ever (O eternal Night)
Till virtue flourish in the light of light.”

George Chapman (1559–1634) English dramatist, poet, and translator

Hymnus in noctem, line 398
The Shadow of Night (1594)

Love , Hate , Mood , Light

“Though Frank Shallard might have come to admire pictures, great music, civilized furniture, he had been trained to regard them as worldly, and to content himself with art which 'presented a message,' to regard 'Les Miserables' as superior because the bishop was a kind man, and 'The Scarlet Letter' as a poor book because the heroine was sinful and the author didn't mind.”

Sinclair Lewis book Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry (1927)

Books , Art , Training

“Without the aid of these, then, it is not possible to deal accurately with the forms of being nor to discover the truth in things, knowledge of which is wisdom, and evidently not even to philosophize properly, for "just as painting contributes to the menial arts toward correctness of theory, so in truth lines, numbers, harmonic intervals, and the revolutions of circles bear aid to the learning of the doctrines of wisdom," says the Pythagorean Androcydes. Likewise Archytas of Tarentum, at the beginning of… On Harmony, says… in about these words: "It seems to me that they do well to study mathematics, and it is not at all strange that they have correct knowledge about each thing, what it is. For if they knew rightly the nature of the whole, they were also likely to see well what is the nature of the parts. About geometry, indeed, and arithmetic and astronomy, they have handed down to us a clear understanding, and not least also about music. For these seem to be sister sciences; for they deal with sister subjects, the first two forms of being."”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

Wisdom , Truth , Art , Mathematics

“From Toscanini I learnt the essential and desperate seriousness of making music.”

Georg Solti (1912–1997) Hungarian orchestral and operatic conductor

Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 256-261 ISBN 0-575-04088-2

“All day the heat had been barely supportable but at evening a breeze arose in the West, blowing from the heart of the setting sun and from the ocean, which lay unseen, unheard behind the scrubby foothills. It shook the rusty fringes of palm-leaf and swelled the dry sounds of summer, the frog-voices, the grating cicadas, and the ever present pulse of music from the neighbouring native huts.”

Evelyn Waugh book The Loved One

First lines
The Loved One (1948)

Support , Sun , Heart , Summer

“We're really not very good about putting music in a social and political context, particularly classical music. It's all sort of above everything. But in South Africa, everything is politicised. You play a piece of classical music out there and you are making a real cultural statement. Or you play with a marimba band and you are saying something else. I think that's the way things should be. The way people write about music makes it seem completely devoid of social context. And audiences drift away as a result.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

Financial Times, 11/11/1999
On Classical Music

People , Way , Thinking

“My mother, my dad and I left Cuba when I was two [January, 1959]. Castro had taken control by then, and life for many ordinary people had become very difficult. My dad had worked [as a personal bodyguard for the wife of Cuban president Batista], so he was a marked man. We moved to Miami, which is about as close to Cuba as you can get without being there. It's a Cuba-centric society. I think a lot of Cubans moved to the US thinking everything would be perfect. Personally, I have to say that those early years were not particularly happy. A lot of people didn't want us around, and I can remember seeing signs that said: "No children. No pets. No Cubans." Things were not made easier by the fact that Dad had begun working for the US government. At the time he couldn't really tell us what he was doing, because it was some sort of top-secret operation. He just said he wanted to fight against what was happening back at home. [Estefan's father was one of the many Cuban exiles taking part in the ill-fated, anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro. ] One night, Dad disappered. I think he was so worried about telling my mother he was going that he just left her a note. There were rumours something was happening back home, but we didn't really know where Dad had gone. It was a scary time for many Cubans. A lot of men were involved -- lots of families were left without sons and fathers. By the time we found out what my dad had been doing, the attempted coup had taken place, on April 17, 1961. Intitially he'd been training in Central America, but after the coup attempt he was captured and spent the next wo years as a political prisoner in Cuba. That was probably the worst time for my mother and me. Not knowing what was going to happen to Dad. I was only a kid, but I had worked out where my dad was. My mother was trying to keep it a secret, so she used to tell me Dad was on a farm. Of course, I thought that she didn't know what had really happened to him, so I used to keep up the pretence that Dad really was working on a farm. We used to do this whole pretending thing every day, trying to protect each other. Those two years had a terrible effect on my mother. She was very nervous, just going from church to church. Always carrying her rosary beads, praying her little heart out. She had her religion, and I had my music. Music was in our family. My mother was a singer, and on my father's side there was a violinist and a pianist. My grandmother was a poet.”

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

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life , Men , Fate , Children

“And the fact of the matter is that everyone should play music because it's such a beautiful gift. It's my religion. But maybe not everyone should play it in front of me. It's okay to play music in your rocking chair or whatever.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Reported in Jay Babcock, " JOSHUA HOMME: People say [record] labels are evil. No, they’re just lame. http://www.arthurmag.com/2007/12/04/josh-homme-people-say-labels-are-evil-no-theyre-just-lame/", Arthur Magazine (December 4, 2007).

Religion , Beauty

“From New Orleans and the back roads of the Mississippi Delta to Harlem and Chicago, black musicians set enduring and distinctive standards for American creativity. The blues of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, the gospel of Mahalia Jackson, the jazz of Duke Ellington, and the soul of Marvin Gaye claim fans of all ages from around the world. The trumpeting genius of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie illustrate the exceptional musicianship so prominent in various genres of African-American music.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Black Music (June 2001)

Age , World , Soul

“I think any music of any worth has been done by people who were very interested in the internal process of their soul and their mind that's taking place while they're writing music.”

John Frusciante (1970) American guitarist, singer, songwriter and record producer

On "The Heart is a Drum Machine" Documentary

People , Soul , Thinking

“Gertrude Stein, in her work, has always been possessed by the intellectual passion for exactitude in the description of the inner and outer reality. She has reproduced simplification by this concentration, and as a result the destruction of associational emotion in poetry and prose. She knows that beauty, music, decoration, the result of emotion should never be the cause, even events should never be the cause of emotion nor should they be the material of poetry or prose. Nor should emotion itself be the cause of poetry and prose. They should consist of an exact reproduction of either an outer or inner reality.”

Gertrude Stein book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Source: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), p. 259

Beauty , Reality , Passion

“I have been influenced by the Bible, Bach's music and contemporarily by Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Williams and Hopkins.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

Letter to Miss Gray in 1936 in response for a biographical sketch. Reproduced in Marianne Moore - A Literary Life by Charles Molesworth, Macmillan, New York 1990