“Music should always be a means of bridging gaps and uniting people. The beauty of music is that it can -- and should -- gather a wide variety of concepts in a way that's universal.”

—  Gloria Estefan

www.internationalspeakers.com February 1, 2007
2007, 2008

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Music should always be a means of bridging gaps and uniting people. The beauty of music is that it can -- and should --…" by Gloria Estefan?
Gloria Estefan photo
Gloria Estefan 195
Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada 1957

Related quotes

George Ade photo

“The music teacher came twice a week to bridge the awful gap between Dorothy and Chopin.”

George Ade (1866–1944) American writer, newspaper columnist and playwright

Fables

Edgard Varèse photo

“Our musical alphabet is poor and illogical. Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor.”

Edgard Varèse (1883–1965) French composer

Edgard Varèse lecture, edited by Chou Wen-Chung, published in: 391, Nr. 5. June 17, 1917. Translated by Louise Varèse; Quoted in: Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music: A Continuing Symposium (1996), .
Context: Our musical alphabet is poor and illogical. Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor.
Why, Italian Futurists, have you slavishly reproduced only what is commonplace and boring in the bustle of our daily lives.
I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.

Dmitri Shostakovich photo

“Jewish folk music has made a most powerful impression on me. I never tire of delighting in it, it's multifaceted, it can appear to be happy while it is tragic. It's almost always laughter through tears. This quality of Jewish folk music is close to my ideas of what music should be. There should always be two layers in music. Jews were tormented for so long that they learned to hide their despair. They express despair in dance music.”

Dmitri Shostakovich book Testimony

Page 156
Testimony (1979)

Dmitri Shostakovich photo

“A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That's how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist

Letter to Isaac Glikman, August 28, 1955; Josiah Fisk & Jeff Nichols (eds.) Composers on Music (1997) p. 364.

Josh Homme photo

“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).

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart photo

“The passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter by Mozart, as quoted in a journal entry (12 December 1856) The Journal of Eugene Delacroix as translated by Walter Pach (1937), p. 521. The quote is not found in any authentic letter by Mozart.

Claude Debussy photo

“Music should humbly seek to please; within these limits great beauty may perhaps be found.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer

Quoted in French Music : From the Death of Berlioz to the Death of Fauré (1951) by Martin Cooper, p. 136, and in Debussy and Wagner (1979) by Robin Holloway, p. 207
Context: Music should humbly seek to please; within these limits great beauty may perhaps be found. Extreme complication is contrary to art. Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part.

Igor Stravinsky photo

“The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.”

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) Russian composer, pianist and conductor

Igor Stravinsky. "Subject: Music", New York Times Magazine, 9/27/64.
1960s

Lady Gaga photo

“I think that fashion and music go hand-in-hand, and they always should. It's the artist's job to create imagery that matches the music… I think they're very intertwined.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Lady Gaga Interview with ARTISTdirect http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/news/article/0,,4931544,00.html.

Claude Debussy photo

“I want no purely musical developments which are not called for inevitably by the text. In opera there is always too much singing. Music should be as swift and mobile as the words themselves.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer

As quoted in Debussy (1989) by Paul Holmes, p. 36
Context: Music would take over at the point at which words become powerless, with the one and only object of expressing that which nothing but music could express. For this, I need a text by a poet who, resorting to discreet suggestion rather than full statement, will enable me to graft my dream upon his dream — who will give me plain human beings in a setting belonging to no particular period or country. … Then I do not wish my music to drown the words, nor to delay the course of the action. I want no purely musical developments which are not called for inevitably by the text. In opera there is always too much singing. Music should be as swift and mobile as the words themselves.

Related topics