“I write music, it's performed. It can be heard, and whoever wants to hear it will. After all, my music says it all. It doesn't need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.”

— Dmitri Shostakovich , book Testimony

Page 196
Testimony (1979)

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Dmitri Shostakovich 32

Russian composer and pianist 1906–1975

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Long after it was heard no more.”

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Source: Great Narrative Poems Of The Romantic Age

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Maurice Jarre (1924–2009) French composer

This quote was actually crafted by University College Dublin student Shane Fitzgerald. Shortly after Jarre's death, Fitzgerald uploaded https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maurice_Jarre&type=revision&diff=280558491&oldid=280527998 the false quote to Wikipedia to test "how our globalised, increasingly internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news," according to the Associated Press. "The sociology major's made-up quote…flew straight on to dozens of US blogs and newspaper websites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first. A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an email and the corrections began." The Guardian and The Herald "are among the only publications to make a public mea culpa," the Associated Press continues. See " Student hoaxes world's media with fake Wiki quote http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/web/student-hoaxes-worlds-media-with-fake-wiki-quote/2009/05/12/1241893953955.html," The Sydney Morning Herald (12 May 2009).
Misattributed

“music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but
you are the music
While the music lasts.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Source: Collected Poems, 1909-1962

“No matter what these people say about me, my music does not glorify any image, my music is spiritual if you listen to it. It's all about emotion, it's all about life.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Prison interviews and interrogations (1995)

“What I have to say is all in the music. If I want to say anything, I write a song.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

“For myself I know that, as long as I can summarize my experience in words, I would certainly not make any music about it.”

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) late-Romantic Austrian composer

Ich weiß für mich, daß ich, solang ich mein Erlebnis in Worten zusammenfassen kann, gewiß keine Musik hierüber machen würde.
Letter to Max Marschalk (26 March 1896). Original German text cited from: Blaukopf, Herta (ed.). Gustav Mahler. Briefe. 2nd edition. Zsolnay, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-552-04810-3, p. 171.
Variant: If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.