Music Is...
(I'm taking the day off, but here are some thoughts on
music from my collection of quotations. Happy New Year!)
What I like about music is its ability to be convincing, to
carry an argument through successfully to the finish, though the terms of the argument
remain unknown quantities.
...John Ashberry
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing
when they are feeling sensible.
...W. H. Auden
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
...Berthold Auerback
Music, not being made up of objects nor referring to
objects, is intangible and ineffable; it can only be, as it were, inhaled by the spirit:
the rest is silence.
...Jacques Barzun
Music touches places beyond our touching.
...Keith Bosley
All pop music is about sex. Rock is about wanting to do it,
jazz is about doing it, and country and western is about feeling guilty after you've
done it.
...Robert W. Brunelle, Jr.
It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one,
better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as
a means of distraction, entertainment, or the acquisition of "culture."
...John Cage
Gospel and blues, if you broke them down, are really the
same thing. It's just a question of whether you're talking about a woman or God.
...Ray Charles
Nothing is more odious than music without hidden meaning.
...Frédéric Chopin
If the music doesn’t say it, how can words say it for
the music?
...John Coltrane
People are wrong when they say the opera isn’t what it
used to be. It is what it used to be. That’s what’s wrong with it.
...Noel Coward
It is only that which cannot be expressed otherwise that is
worth expressing in music.
...Frederick Delius
We’re not worried about writing for posterity. We just
want it to sound good right now!
...Duke Ellington
Anyone who listens to a Beethoven quartet or symphony and
can’t hear soul is in trouble. Maybe they can hear the sound of blackness, but
they’re deaf to soul.
...Ralph Ellison
Magic is what we do. Music is the way we do it.
...Jerry Garcia
Words make you think thoughts. Music makes you feel a
feeling. But a song makes you feel a thought.
...Yip Harburg
Music is meaningless noise unless it touches a receiving
mind.
...Paul Hindemith
Music has a poetry of its own, and that poetry is called
melody.
...Joshua Logan
Be honest with yourself until the end of your life. Then
listen to the slow movement of the Schubert Quintet and kick the bucket.
...Nathan Milstein
Rests always sound well.
...Arnold Schoenberg
Lean your body forward slightly to support the guitar
against your chest, for the poetry of the music should resound in your heart.
...Andrés Segovia
Music is indivisible. The dualism of feeling and thinking
must be resolved to a state of unity in which one thinks with the heart and feels with the
brain.
...George Szell
Music is the shorthand of emotion.
...Leo Tolstoy
Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the
B Minor Mass?
...Michael Torke
If you want to please only the critics, don't play too
loud, too soft, too fast, too slow.
...Arturo Toscanini
Mozart's music gives us permission to live.
...John Updike
Without a song the bush knife is dull.
...West African proverb
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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