Quotes about music
page 24

Akira Ifukube photo
Daniel Levitin photo
Justine Frischmann photo
John McLaughlin photo
Brian Greene photo
Basshunter photo

“The album is very different from the all the other albums today. First of all, the album was one year delayed because I wasn’t happy and every time I did an album it was unofficially finished. I had some time to listen to some new songs and plug into some music programs and discovered this new song and delayed the release for a month, because I wanted to update the new tracks to these new sounds I found… so then when I did that all the other songs sounded like crap compared to the new ones! So I said f*** this I need to reproduce the other ones as well. Then I scrapped a few songs and produced new ones. So to produce this album I pretty much produced maybe about 50 tracks and picked out the best of them. You know when you buy an album from a producer/artist, you kind of hear the same sound repeating in each song, you hear the same sound repeating, but this album is like every song is individual. Like you wont find two songs which have the same sound. Each song is completely different which I think kind of represents what I do because I produce everything and I love producing everything. Sometimes I’m in the mood to produce you know a dance song, sometimes I’m in the mood to produce an R&B song, it’s just interesting because I just want to show people that I can deliver to all ears.”

Guestlist interview with Ria Talsania (10 July 2013) https://guestlist.net/article/9219/catching-up-with-basshunter
Calling Time

Alastair Reynolds photo
Anson Chan photo

“And 'speak truth unto power'? What does this mean? It means giving your best advice to superiors based on the best information available and objective analysis even when you know it may not be music to their ears.”

Anson Chan (1940) Hong Kong politician

Source: From Anson Chan's speech addressing to the Asia Society Hong Kong Center in April 2001.

Billy Corgan photo

“To me, music was about being accepted and escaping from this crummy existence.”

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

Smashing Pumpkins (1996)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo

“When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.”

Part I, section 1.
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)

Adlai Stevenson photo
William Blum photo
David Brewster photo
Lang Lang photo
Abby Stein photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Billy Corgan photo
Peter Greenaway photo

“Nun 1: Sir, it is only a play… with music. Do not distress yourself.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

The Baby of Mâcon

Elaine Paige photo
Kate Bush photo

“What am I singing?
A song of seeds — The food of love. Eat the music.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Red Shoes (1993)

Bono photo
Vitruvius photo
Benjamin Boretz photo
Edward Young photo

“And waste their music on the savage race.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

Satire V, l. 228.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)

Duke Ellington photo

“There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind … the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it's successful; if it doesn't it has failed.”

Duke Ellington (1899–1974) American jazz musician, composer and band leader

Where Is Jazz Going? Music Journal (1962) Reproduced in The Duke Ellington Reader, ISBN 978-0-19-509391-9.

Gene Vincent photo
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan photo
Steve Reich photo

“I discovered that the most interesting music of all was made by simply lining the loops in unison, and letting them slowly shift out of phase with each other…”

Steve Reich (1936) American composer

Source: Steve Reich, ‎Paul Hillier (2002) Writings on Music, 1965-2000, p. 20

Jerry Coyne photo
Margaret Caroline Anderson photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Brandon Boyd photo
Gloria Estefan photo
William Styron photo

“In many of Albrecht Dürer’s engravings there are harrowing depictions of his own melancholia; the manic wheeling stars of Van Gogh are the precursors of the artist’s plunge into dementia and the extinction of self. It is a suffering that often tinges the music of Beethoven, of Schumann and Mahler, and permeates the darker cantatas of Bach. The vast metaphor which most faithfully represents this fathomless ordeal, however, is that of Dante, and his all-too-familiar lines still arrest the imagination with their augury of the unknowable, the black struggle to come:
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
Ché la diritta via era smarrita.
In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wood,
For I had lost the right path.
One can be sure that these words have been more than once employed to conjure the ravages of melancholia, but their somber foreboding has often overshadowed the last lines of the best-known part of that poem, with their evocation of hope. To most of those who have experienced it, the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression, hence the frustrated sense of inadequacy found in the work of even the greatest artists. But in science and art the search will doubtless go on for a clear representation of its meaning, which sometimes, for those who have known it, is a simulacrum of all the evil of our world: of our everyday discord and chaos, our irrationality, warfare and crime, torture and violence, our impulse toward death and our flight from it held in the intolerable equipoise of history. If our lives had no other configuration but this, we should want, and perhaps deserve, to perish; if depression had no termination, then suicide would, indeed, be the only remedy. But one need not sound the false or inspirational note to stress the truth that depression is not the soul’s annihilation; men and women who have recovered from the disease — and they are countless — bear witness to what is probably its only saving grace: it is conquerable.”

Source: Darkness Visible (1990), X

Thomas Gainsborough photo
Ornette Coleman photo
Ani DiFranco photo
Yehudi Menuhin photo

“Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: Jamesh A. Leit, George Whalley Symboles Dans la Vie Et Dans L'art http://books.google.co.in/books?id=pRZEKhofl_gC&pg=PA29, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1987, p. 29

Pierre Schaeffer photo

“People who try to create a musical revolution do not have a chance, but those who turn their back to music can sometimes find it.”

Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995) French musicologist

Electronic Musician magazine, December 1986
Interviews

Leonard Cohen photo
George Herbert photo

“Sundays observe; think when the bells do chime,
'T is angels' music.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

The Temple (1633), The Church Porch

“O. K., I'm a rock critic. I also write and record music. I write poetry, fiction, straight journalism, unstraight journalism, beatnik drivel, mortifying love letters, death threats to white jazz critics signed "The Mau Maus of East Harlem," and once a year my own obituary (latest entry: "He was promising…").”

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

"An Instant Fan's Inspired Notes: You Gotta Listen" (1980), from Da Capo Best Music Writing 2000, ed. Peter Guralnick (Da Capo Press, 2000, ISBN 0306809990), p. 100

Honoré de Balzac photo
Hermann Hesse photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Joe Satriani photo

“It really sucks when music is so perfect you just don't need to hear it anymore.”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

Discussing his intentionally-out-of-tune intro to "Back To Shalla Bal" and contrasting it to the "perfectness" of Abba's vocals.
As quoted in Guitar Player (November 1989).

Hans von Bülow photo

“The editor of this selection from Chopin’s Pianoforte Studies has, however, no such intention; on the contrary. he wishes to make some of them, which owing to their difficulty have hitherto remained unpopularised, more accessible, particularly to the amateur, by pointing out the way to their correct study. And thus, on the basis of the technical facility to be acquired through these pieces, to enable even the non-professional to enjoy a more intimate acquaintance with those works of the classical romanticist, which, though representing the best and most undying side of his genius, have found till now but a small, though daily increasing circle of admirers; for the “Ladies’-Chopin”, which for forty years has blossomed in the pale and sickly rays of dilettantism; the “talented, languishing, Polish youth” to whom the most modest place on the Parnassus of musical literature was denied by the amateurish criticism of German professors, is as little the genuine entire Chopin, as is the Beethoven of “Adelaide” and the “Moonlight Sonata”, the god of Symphony. Truly a span of time must yet elapse before the matured and manly Chopin, the author of the two Sonatas, the 3rd and 4th Scherzos, the 4th Ballade, the Polonaise in F# minor, the later Mazurkas and Nocturnes etc., will be completely and generally appreciated at his full worth. At the same time much may be done by preparing and clearing the way; and one of the best means towards this end is sifting the material, and replacing favourite and unimportant works, by those less known though more important.”

Hans von Bülow (1830–1894) German musician

Preface to Instructive ausgabe. Klavier-Etuden von Fr. Chopin, 1880.

Daniel Levitin photo
Andrew Sega photo

“I'm not a big fan of asynchronicity just for its own sake - a lot of people push rhythmic variation so far that the basic pulse of the music gets lost”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

and the listener is confused
Static Line interview, 1998

Daniel Levitin photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Andrew Sega photo
Léon Theremin photo

“I was interested in making a different kind of instrument. And I wanted, of course, to make an apparatus that would be controlled in space, exploiting electrical fields, and that would use little energy. Therefore I used electronic technology to create a musical instrument that would provide greater resources.”

Léon Theremin (1896–1993) Russian inventor

Source: An Interview with Leon Theremin http://www.oddmusic.com/theremin/theremin_interview_1.html / Olivia Mattis and Leon Theremin in Bourges, France 16 June 1989.

Vangelis photo

“On working alone: "I enjoy working alone. I know myself, and I know what I want… and all this allows me to create my music before my thoughts can interrupt."”

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

1979

Camille Paglia photo
Clayton M. Christensen photo
Elton John photo
Patrick Modiano photo
Johannes Kepler photo

“I got rhythm,
I got music,
I got my man
Who could ask for anything more?”

Ira Gershwin (1896–1983) American lyricist

"I Got Rhythm", Girl Crazy, Act I (1930).

“Horror has many iterations, many shades. Landing the perfect balance of melody, texture and sonics is the key to a great score. Some horror films require a huge, aggressive palette. Others are the complete opposite. Finding that musical happy place is what will make the movie from a score perspective.”

Michael Wandmacher (1967) composer

Interview with Underworld: Blood Wars Composer, Michael Wandmacher http://www.thesoundarchitect.co.uk/interview-underworld-blood-wars-composer-michael-wandmacher/ (February 15, 2018)

Tarkan photo
Angus Young photo
Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton photo
Andrew Sega photo
Taylor Swift photo

“Music starts playing like the end of a sad movie.
It's the kind of ending you don't really wanna see.
'Cause it's tragedy and it'll only bring you down.
Now I don't know what to be without you around.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Breathe, written by Taylor Swift and Colbie Caillat
Song lyrics, Fearless (2008)

Richard Dawkins photo
Ernest Flagg photo
Constant Lambert photo
M. Balamuralikrishna photo
Henry Miller photo

“On the Indian front, [the Hindutva movement] should spearhead the revival, rejuvenation and resurgence of Hinduism, which includes not only religious, spiritual and cultural practices springing from Vedic or Sanskritic sources, but from all other Indian sources independently of these: the practices of the Andaman islanders and the (pre-Christian) Nagas are as Hindu in the territorial sense, and Sanâtana in the spiritual sense, as classical Sanskritic Hinduism. (…) A true Hindutvavadi should feel a pang of pain, and a desire to take positive action, not only when he hears that the percentage of Hindus in the Indian population is falling due to a coordination of various factors, or that Hindus are being discriminated against in almost every respect, but also when he hears that the Andamanese races and languages are becoming extinct; that vast tracts of forests, millions of years old, are being wiped out forever; that ancient and mediaeval Hindu architectural monuments are being vandalised, looted or fatally neglected; that priceless ancient documents are being destroyed or left to rot and decay; that innumerable forms of arts and handicrafts, architectural styles, plant and animal species, musical forms and musical instruments, etc. are becoming extinct; that our sacred rivers and environment are being irreversibly polluted and destroyed…”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

Talageri in S.R. Goel (ed.): Time for Stock-Taking, p.227-228.

André Maurois photo
George W. Bush photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Evgeny Kissin photo

“Here lies Evgeny Kissin, son of the Jewish people, a servant of music.”

Evgeny Kissin (1971) Russian classical pianist

Suggested epitaph, given in The Economist, July 8th 2017, page 73

Jascha Heifetz photo

“Criticism does not disturb me, for I am my own severest critic. Always in my playing I strive to surpass myself, and it is this constant struggle that makes music fascinating to me.”

Jascha Heifetz (1901–1987) Lithuanian violinist

Heifetz official web site http://www.jaschaheifetz.com/about/quotes.html

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Thomas Henry Huxley photo
Shreya Ghoshal photo
Siegbert Tarrasch photo
Margaret Mead photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Lars Ulrich photo

“If there are people that are dumb enough to use Metallica to interrogate prisoners, you're forgetting about all the music that's to the left of us. I can name, you know, 30 Norwegian death metal bands that would make Metallica sound like Simon & Garfunkel.”

Lars Ulrich (1963) Danish musician

Said upon discovering that, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, uncooperative prisoners were exposed to the Metallica song "Enter Sandman" for extended periods by American interrogators.
Source: [Maddow, Rachel, Rachel Maddow, Lars Ulrich, Metallica's Lars Ulrich joins Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, April 27, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuNfAFOv2F4&t=6m19s, April 18, 2015]

Tim Cook photo

“We [at Apple] worry about the humanity being drained out of music, about it becoming a bits-and-bytes kind of world instead of the art and craft.”

Tim Cook (1960) American business executive

TechSpot: "Tim Cook thinks Spotify is 'draining the humanity out of music'" https://www.techspot.com/news/75875-tim-cook-thinks-spotify-draining-humanity-out-music.html (8 August 2018)