“The composer is seldom a great theorist; the theorist is never a great composer. Each is equally fatal to and essential in the other.”
Action and Study
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting
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Samuel Butler 232
novelist 1835–1902Related quotes
Theory about composers http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/music/news/National-Award-made-me-conscious-Shreya/articleshow/5501985.cms
Volume V, part VIII, chapter I, section 2 (1860).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)
“Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you.”
Cited in Imogen Holst The Music of Gustav Holst (1951) p. 73 as "His favourite piece of advice".
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body, p 49
Listening Beethoven's F minor Quartet; Quoted by Walter Legge, in Walter Legge: Words and Music (1998) edited by Alan Sanders
"We thought: we're poor"
We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day -
And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.
Translated by Ilya Shambat (2001)
White Flock (1917)