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Quotations about music
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier.
Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) American abolitionist, women's rights activist [b. Isabella Baumfree]
Quoted in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Letter to the Editor, New York World (13 May 1867)
(Source)
Recorded in Stanton, Anthony, Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. 2 "1861-76", Appendix to Chapter 18 (1881).
This quote is often given with the following sentence appended to it:
I will not allow my life's light to be determined by the darkness around me.
However this is not in the original, and I have been unable to source it.
I have always regarded technique as a means, not an end in itself. One must, of course, master techniques; at the same time, one must not become enslaved by it — one must understand that the purpose of technique is to transmit the inner meaning, the message, of the music. The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all.
Pablo Casals (1876-1973) Spanish cellist, conductor, composer
Joys and Sorrows, ch. 5 (1970) [with Albert E. Kahn]
(Source)
The mocking bird is music-mad to-night,
He thinks the stars are notes;
That he must sing each spattered star, and be
A choir of many throats.The earth is his cathedral, and its dome
Is all the light-pricked sky;
The pear-tree is his choir loft, and there
He flings his mad songs high.
Perhaps the safest thing to do at the outset, if technology permits, is to send music. This language may be the best we have for explaining what we are like to others in space, with least ambiguity. I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course, but surely it is excusable for us to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.
Lewis Thomas (1913-1993) American physician, poet, essayist, researcher
“Ceti,” New England Journal of Medicine (10 Feb 1972)
(Source)
On sending messages to extraterrestrial civilizations on other worlds, e.g. Tau Ceti. Citation N Engl J Med 1972; 286:306-307. Reprinted in The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974).
Like all music, the figured bass should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul; where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamour and ranting.
[Und soll wie aller Musik also auch des Generalbasses Finis und Endursache anders nicht als nur zu Gottes Ehre und Recreation des Gemütes sein. Wo dieses nicht in acht genommen wird, ists keine eigentliche Musik, sondern ein Teuflisches Geplerr und Geleier.]
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
Martin Mull (b. 1943) American actor, comedian
(Attributed)
Many people have put many hours into determining the origin of this quotation, but the best evidence at present points to Mull, in or before early 1979. See:
When the violin repeats what the piano has just played, it cannot make the same sounds and it can only approximate the same chords. It can, however, make recognizably the same “music,” the same air. But it can do so only when it is as faithful to the self-logic of the violin as it is to the self-logic of the piano.
John Ciardi (1916-1986) American poet, writer, critic
Translator’s Note (1954) to Dante, The Inferno (1308-1320)
(Source)
All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.
As commentary on the above, we add, that when artists or art critics make the assertion that art excludes propaganda, what they are saying is that their kind of propaganda is art, and other kinds of propaganda are not art. Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is the other fellow’s doxy.
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) American writer, journalist, activist, politician
Mammonart, ch. 2 “Who Owns the Artists?” (1925)
(Source)
A work of art does not answer questions: it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between their contradictory answers.
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer, pianist
“A Sabbatical Report,” sec. 1, New York Times (24 Oct 1965)
(Source)
Reprinted in The Infinite Variety of Music (1966)
Architecture in general is frozen music.
Friedrich von Schelling (1775-1854) German philosopher
Philosophie der Kunst (1809)
Often attributed to Johann von Goethe, who used a similar description ("frozen music" or "petrified music") in an 1829 letter.
I got rhythm, I got music,
I got my man
Who could ask for anything more?Ira Gershwin (1896-1983) American lyricist [b. Israel Gershowitz]
“I Got Rhythm”, Girl Crazy, Act 1 (1930)
(Source)
The music — It’s ghostly, it’s wild, and it teeters on the edge of arrhythmia: a skirling mournful howl of tormented strings, the distant moaning of a tied-down giant whose vocal cords are being bowed by malign Lilliputian tormentors, intent on turning his every attempt at spoken communication into a vehicle for an inhuman melody.
Music is no different from opium. Music affects the human mind in a way that makes people think of nothing but music and sensual matters. […] Music is a treason to the country, a treason to our youth, and we should cut out all this music and replace it with something instructive.
Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989) Iranian Shia Muslim religious leader, revolutionary, politician
Ramadan Speech (23 Jul 1979)
America’s two great specialties are demagogues and rock and roll, and we’ve all heard plenty of both in our time.
Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
“Busted” (2009)
MINSTREL: [singing]
He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp,
Or to have his eyes gouged out and his elbows broken,
To have his kneecaps split and his body burned away,
And his limbs all hacked and mangled, brave Sir Robin!
His head smashed in, and his heart cut out,
And his liver removed, and his bowels unplugged,
And his nostrils raped, and his bottom burnt off,
And his penis —SIR ROBIN: That’s enough music for now, lads.
Monty Python (contemp.) British comedy troupe
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
There are two means of refuge from the misery of life: music and cats.
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) Alsatian theologian, philosopher, physician, philanthropist
(Attributed)
Mister Marvin Middle Class is really in a stew
Wond’rin’ what the younger generation’s coming to
And the taste of his martini doesn’t please his bitter tongue
Blame it on the Rolling Stones.
Blame it on the Stones; blame it on the Stones
You’ll feel so much better, knowing you don’t stand alone
Join the accusation; save the bleeding nation
Get it off your shoulders; blame it on the Stones.Kris Kristofferson (b. 1936) American singer, songwriter, musician, actor
“Blame It on The Stones” (1970) [with Bucky Wilkin]
As my dad always says, while improvisation and spontaneity may be the hallmarks of great jazz, the hallmark of being a great player is ensuring the rest of the band is spontaneously improvising the way you want them to.
Ben Aaronovitch (b. 1964) British author
Broken Homes (2013)
Music and silence — how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell — though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express — no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise — Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile — Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Screwtape Letters (1942)
We may have an excellent Ear in Musick, without being able to perform in any kind. We may judge well of Poetry, without being Poets, or possessing the least of a Poetick Vein: But we can have no tolerable Notion of Goodness, without being tolerably good.
Anthony Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) English politician and philosopher
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Vol. 1, “A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm” (1711)
Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian.
Roger Fry (1866-1934) English artist and art critic
(Attributed)
Quoted in Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, ch. 11 (1940).
The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man — that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense — has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
“The Blushful Mystery: Art and Sex,” Prejudices: First Series (1919)
You can “just listen” to the Brahms violin concerto and enjoy it keenly. But if you read about Brahms’ life, you appreciate it more. And, if you’ve listened to recordings of it, you will appreciate it ten times as much.
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) Lithuanian-American violinist
(Unsourced)
Quoted on his official web page.
After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
“The Rest is Silence,” Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)
(Source)
In this country the Episcopalians have done some good, and I want to thank that church. Having on an average less religion than the others — on an average you have done more good to mankind. You preserved some of the humanities. You did not hate music; you did not absolutely despise painting, and you did not altogether abhor architecture, and you finally admitted that it was no worse to keep time with your feet than with your hands. And some went so far as to say that people could play cards, and that God would overlook it, or would look the other way. For all these things accept my thanks.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
“What Must We Do to Be Saved?” Sec. 7 (1880)
(Source)
The idea is like the seed corn; it grows imperceptibly in secret. When I have invented or discovered the beginning of a song …, I shut up the book and go for a walk or take up something else; I think no more of it for perhaps half a year. Nothing is lost, though. When I come back to it again, it has unconsciously taken a new shape, and is ready for me to begin working at it.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) German composer and pianist
Conversation with George Henschel
(Source)
Quoted in a letter to Herr and Frau von Herzogenberg in Max Kalbeck, ed., the Brahms-Gesellschaft collection of correspondence, Vol. 2 [tr. Bryant (1909)], as cited in John Alexander Fuller-Maitland, Brahms, ch. 3 (1911).
Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, ch. 1, “Life” (1912)
(Source)
As some to church repair
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet
“An Essay on Criticism,” Part 2, l. 142-3 (1711)
