MUSIC QUOTES III
quotations about music
Words must ever sound so feeble in attempting to express the magic power of melody.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
When time itself shall be no more / And all things in confusion hurl'd / Music shall then exert it's power / And sound survive the ruins of the world / Then saints and angels shall agree / In one eternal jubilee / All Heaven shall echo with their hymns divine / And God himself with pleasure see / The whole creation in a chorus join.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Song for St. Cecilia's Day
This music is forever for me. It's the stage thing, that rush moment that you live for. It never lasts, but that's what you live for.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Time Magazine, October 27, 1975
For me, my voice and music was always an outlet. Growing up in an unstable environment and whatnot, music was my only real escape.
CHRISTINA AGUILERA
Rolling Stone, Aug. 24, 2006
Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.
PLATO
The Republic
I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"I Am in Need of Music"
Whenever humans come together for any reason, music is there: weddings, funerals, graduation from college, men marching off to war, stadium sporting events, a night on the town, prayer, a romantic dinner, mothers rocking their infants to sleep ... music is a part of the fabric of everyday life.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
This Is Your Brain on Music
Music ... is the frozen tapioca in the ice sheet of History.
DONALD BARTHELME
"Conversations with Goethe"
Music is a language lovers understand
Melody and romance wander hand in hand
Cupid never fails assisted by a band
So if you have something sweet to tell her
Say it with music
IRVING BERLIN
"Say It With Music"
Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"Letter to Mr. B--"
The emotional impact of music is so incommensurate with what people can say about it, and that seems to be very illustrative of something fundamental--that very powerful emotional effects often can’t be articulated. You know something’s happened to you but you don’t know what it is.
ADAM PHILLIPS
The Paris Review, spring 2014
Everything is music for the born musician.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Jean-Christophe
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have here below.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
Not only is music a beautiful and sublime science, the study of which ennobles and purifies the mind of its votary, but how many and excellent are its ministries to others!
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Wor
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
attributed, The Journal of Eugene Delacroiz
I don't read music. And my mom is this classically trained person, and I went the other way. And I think it's helped me write songs that I wouldn't have written if I were going at the technical way. Because they go, "Oh, you can't go from this chord to that chord. It's not the way you're supposed to do it."
MARIAH CAREY
Larry King Live, Dec. 19, 2002
Music is organized sound, but the organization has to involve some element of the unexpected or it is emotionally flat and robotic. The appreciation we have for music is intimately related to our ability to learn the underlying structure of music we like--the equivalent to grammar in spoken or signed languages--and to be able to make predictions about what will come next. Composers imbue music with emotion by knowing what our expectations are and then very deliberately controlling when those expectations will be met, and when they won't. The thrills, chills, and tears we experience from music are the result of having our expectations artfully manipulated by a skilled composer and the musicians who interpret that music.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
This Is Your Brain on Music
The music, yearning like a God in pain.
JOHN KEATS
"The Eve of Saint Agnes"
Music recalls a state of feeling, and not merely a series of incidents. When we listen to the long-forgotten melody, we do not review the scenes and actions of our childhood in succession, but we become for the moment children once again.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
True life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin while you went out in the world and met the obligations required of you.
ANN PATCHETT
Bel Canto