“A knowledge of Bach is the beginning of musical wisdom.”

— Walter Raymond Spalding

Page 47 https://books.google.com/books?id=pQARAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA47. <br class="br">Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Polyphonic Music; Sebastian Bach (Ch. III)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 10, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A knowledge of Bach is the beginning of musical wisdom." by Walter Raymond Spalding?

Walter Raymond Spalding10

American music pedagogue and author 1865–1962

Related quotes

“Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best…”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

"Packard Goose"
"Joe's Garage Acts II & III" (1979)
Variant: Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best.

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

Solomon (-990–-931 BC) king of Israel and the son of David

[Proverbs, 1:7, KJV] (KJV)

“It is fitting that a discourse on Romantic music should commence with a meditation on the art of Bach. The Bach revival is still sometimes considered an early nineteenth-century phenomenon, although this is hardly tenable: in the 1780s Mozart was deeply affected by Bach, and at the same time Beethoven was being brought up on the Well-Tempered Keyboard. Bach was well known to European musicians as a composer of keyboard music through manuscript copies of this work long before systematic publication began in 1800. The "revival" of Bach in the Romantic period was basically a rediscovery of his choral works and a new evaluation of his technique: his art was no longer simply a model for the fugue, as it had been in the eyes of Mozart, but for the art of music as a whole. The new approach to Bach and to Baroque music in general, however, did not extend to the sound of that music on the original instruments. Few musicians in the 1820s and '30s 'had the slightest interest in the sonority of old harpsichords or Baroque organs (Ignaz Moscheles was an engaging exception). What they saw, and needed to see, in Bach was the achievement of an ideal.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 1 : Music and Sound

“He is terribly rare. He is like Bach, who in his time had a great concentration of ability, essence, knowledge, a spread of music. Astaire has that same concentration of genius; there is so much of the dance in him that it has been distilled.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

George Balanchine in Nabokov, Ivan and Carmichael, Elizabeth. "Balanchine, An Interview". Horizon, January 1961, pp. 44-56. (M).

“Chopin absolutely was influenced by Bach. We know that before Chopin himself performed in concert, he didn’t play anything other than Bach. His own Preludes are a reference to the Well-Tempered Clavier of Bach, and all Chopin’s students had to play Bach. In whole, Chopin admired Bach most of all composers, and it was nothing less than the Well-Tempered Clavier itself that was his musical diary. I also have said that Chopin is the crowning and climax of piano-playing. It’s something so unique, all-affecting in emotionalism, musical architecture, and structure, that all past giants are present in it: Bach and Mozart. Chopin’s elegance is so singular, that again you need much experience to convey his music in the real and original style. The question of rubato is very sensitive: It’s nothing arbitrary, but much more something well calculated and well proportioned, something that is integrated in the classical strength of form, which is constructed on the profound knowledge of the polyphonic and contrapuntal structures of Bach and Mozart. Whether the Goldbergs may relate to this question? Absolutely! I again want to mention a certain and special term: jeu perlé.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Without this you can’t play Chopin, you can’t play Mozart, and lastly absolutely not the Goldbergs.
Talkings on Bach

“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

“Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom.”

James Gleick book The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

"One God One Religion - Brother Hamza Andreas Tzortzis" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q-vmmLFat8, Youtube (April 16, 2018) <br class="br">Source: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

“There are three parts to learning: information, knowledge and wisdom, A mere accumulation of information is not knowledge, and a treasure of knowledge is not in itself, wisdom.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ink and Bone

“Both knowledge and wisdom extend man's reach. Knowledge led to computers, wisdom to chopsticks.”

Alan Perlis (1922–1990) American computer scientist

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

“The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
Source: Why I Am An Agnostic and Other Essays

“A knowledge of Bach is the beginning of musical wisdom.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Walter Raymond Spalding10

Related quotes

Related topics