Music

"The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence."

"This art is music. It stands quite apart from all the others. In it we do not recognize the copy, the repetition, of any Idea of the inner nature of the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly fine art, its effect on man's innermost nature is so powerful, and it is so completely and profoundly understood by him in his innermost being as an entirely universal language, whose distinctness surpasses even that of the world of perception itself, that in it we certainly have to look for more than that exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi [exercise in arithmetic in which the mind does not know it is counting] which Leibniz took it to be."

"The term 'chromatic' is understood by musicians to refer to music which includes tones which are not members of the prevailing scale, and also as a word descriptive of those individually non-diatonic tones."

"Seventy-five percent of everything done throughout your life is the result of habit. Think of it! The way you walk, the way you eat, the clothes you wear, the places you go and...last, but not least, the way you play your accordion."

"If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die."

"My job is to play music, not politics, and my only obligation is to the people who pay to listen to me. I don't attempt to ram hackneyed, insipid tunes down the public's throat just because they've been artificially hypoed to the so-called 'hit' class. This policy of trying to maintain some vestige of musical integrity has, naturally, earned me enemies, people who think I'm a longhair, impressed with my own ability."

"Music is the brandy of the damned."

"Music—the language of the immortals, disclosed to us as testimony of their existence..."

"Language is its own music."

"We give our souls to our music. We put our lives on the fucking wax and the labels treat us like shit."

"Sometimes even in the habitual course of life, the reality of this world disappears all at once, and we feel ourselves in the middle of its interests as we should at a ball, where we did not hear the music; the dancing that we saw there would appear insane."

"[S]o far as music ever had a "meaning" beyond the immediate and exquisite value of the sound-pattern itself, its "meaning" must be simply an emotional attitude. It could never speak directly about the objective world, or "the nature of existence"; but it might create a complex emotional attitude which might be appropriate to some feature of the objective world, or to the universe as a whole."

"It was music, more than anything else, that led the Pythagoreans to believe that the universe is a harmonious place governed by numbers."

"I was ... attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing “simple” music, blamed for deserting “modernism,” accused of renouncing my “true Russian heritage.” People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried “sacrilege”: “The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone.” To them all my answer was and is the same: You “respect,” but I love."

"The day you open your mind to music, you're halfway to opening your mind to life."

"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."

"I feel very strongly that all individuals, regardless of age, race, creed or sexual preference, should have the freedom to exercise their rights as human beings to enjoy life, pursue what they want and feel comfortable about who they are. I guess I tend to find the darker sides of life more attractive than the yellows and oranges. I know it's something that I relate to when I listen to music."

"Steven Pinker … advances interesting ideas about understanding human mind in terms of “reverse engineering”: we see that adaptations to our environment have been achieved, and define our task as explaining the means by which these have come about. … But Pinker finds music making—universal in all cultures—to be anomalous. Which means there must be something basically wrong or missing in his view. James could have told him what it is: To miss the joy is to miss all. … The fusion of reality and ideal novelty excites and empowers us, and does so because we are organisms which, to be vital, must celebrate our being."

"Die Menschen heute glauben, die Wissenschaftler seien da, sie zu belehren, die Dichter und Musiker, etc., sie zu erfreuen. Daß diese sie etwas zu lehren haben; kommt ihnen nicht in den Sinn."

"One day I said to myself that it would be better to get rid of all that—melody, rhythm, harmony, etc. This was not a negative thought and did not mean that it was necessary to avoid them, but rather that, while doing something else, they would appear spontaneously. We had to liberate ourselves from the direct and peremptory consequence of intention and effect, because the intention would always be our own and would be circumscribed, when so many other forces are evidently in action in the final effect."

"Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand. With an equal opportunity for all to sing, dance and clap their hands."

"Books! ‘tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland Linnet, How sweet his music! on my life, There’s more of wisdom in it. And hark! how blithe the Throstle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher: Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher."

"Perfect is not the point. Music isn’t a math problem with one correct answer — it’s a captured moment, feeling translated into sound. Often its charm lies in idiosyncrasies: the raw edge, the human quiver in a voice. Those ‘flaws’ are sometimes what make it compelling."

"Music is the only religion that delivers the goods. All music is good. It fulfills a social function. It's like wallpaper to your lifestyle. It defines what you are."

"A composer's job involves the decoration of fragments of time. Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."

"Music religious heat inspires, It wakes the soul, and lifts it high, And wings it with sublime desires, And fits it to bespeak the Deity."

"Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, Expels diseases, softens every pain, Subdues the rage of poison, and the plague."

"That rich celestial music thrilled the air From hosts on hosts of shining ones, who thronged Eastward and westward, making bright the night."

"Music tells no truths."

"Rugged the breast that music cannot tame."

"If music and sweet poetry agree."

"Gayly the troubadour Touched his guitar."

"I'm saddest when I sing."

"God is its author, and not man; he laid The key-note of all harmonies; he planned All perfect combinations, and he made Us so that we could hear and understand."

"The rustle of the leaves in summer's hush When wandering breezes touch them, and the sigh That filters through the forest, or the gush That swells and sinks amid the branches high,— 'Tis all the music of the wind, and we Let fancy float on this æolian breath."

""Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast," And therefore proper at a sheriff's feast."

"And sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument; for there is music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres."

"Yet half the beast is the great god Pan, To laugh, as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man. The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain— For the reed that grows never more again As a reed with the reeds of the river."

"Her voice, the music of the spheres, So loud, it deafens mortals' ears; As wise philosophers have thought, And that's the cause we hear it not."

"For discords make the sweetest airs."

"Soprano, basso, even the contra-alto Wished him five fathom under the Rialto."

"Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell."

"There's music in the sighing of a reed; There's music in the gushing of a rill; There's music in all things, if men had ears: Their earth is but an echo of the spheres."

"And hears thy stormy music in the drum!"

"Merrily sang the monks in Ely When Cnut, King, rowed thereby; Row, my knights, near the land, And hear we these monkes' song."

"Music is well said to be the speech of angels."

"When music, heavenly maid, was young, While yet in early Greece she sung, The Passions oft, to hear her shell, Throng'd around her magic cell."

"In notes by distance made more sweet."

"In hollow murmurs died away."

"Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. I've read that things inanimate have moved, And, as with living souls, have been inform'd, By magic numbers and persuasive sound."