Monday, October 05, 2009

Some favourite quotes about Music

Music is enough for a lifetime
But a lifetime is not enough for Music.
- Serge Rachmaninov

Musica laetitiae comes medicina dolorum.
Music is the companion of joy and the medicine of sorrow.
- Anon

Song title:
You don’t have to join the Ku Klux Klan to be a wizard under the sheets!

Album Title:
Songs I Learnt At My Mother's Knee (and some other low joints)

Music,
which can be made anywhere,
Is invisible and does not smell
- W H Auden

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
- Berthold Auerbach

You just have to press the right keys and the right pedals at the right time and the music plays itself.
- J S Bach

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul. If heed is not paid to this, it is not true music but a diabolical bawling and twanging.
- J S Bach

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) [on the Well-Tempered Clavier]
This is not a brook [Bach means "brook" in German], it’s an ocean.

We musicians, like everyone else, are numb with sorrow at this murder, and with rage at the senselessness of the crime. But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. And with each note we will honor the spirit of John Kennedy, commemorate his courage, and reaffirm his faith in the Triumph of the Mind.
from Leonard Bernstein's Tribute to John F. Kennedy Speech made at United Jewish Appeal benefit Madison Square Garden, New York - 25 November 1963

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be 'No.'
- Aaron Copland

My biggest kick in music – playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?
- Duke Ellington

Objectivity in music is rubbish ... Have you ever had an objective love affair? And what is music but love?
- Lili Kraus

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.
- Martin Luther

It’s kind of like a funky sort of Afro-Cuban swinging jazz-rock sort of Classical punk waltz reggae calypso sort of Scottish feel.
- James Morrison, on his song "Ease on in"
James and his family lived, for a time, across the road from my Uncle Dave and Aunty Win. Aunty Win says they were very nice but very quiet, and only occasionally would you hear music coming from the house

Without music, life would be a mistake.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

There is nothing more difficult than talking about music.
- Camille Saint-Saƫns

The study of the history of music and the hearing of masterworks of different epochs will quickly cure you of vanity and self-adoration.
- Robert Schumann

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I've felt it.
- Igor Stravinsky

You just pick a chord, go twang, and you've got music!
- Sid Vicious

and I love these three Frank Zappa quotes:
Some people crave baseball -- I find this unfathomable --
but I can easily understand why a person could get excited about playing a bassoon.

I write the music I like. If other people like it, fine, they can go buy the albums. And if they don't like it, there's always Michael Jackson for them to listen to.

It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think I'm wrong. The number of people who thought Hitler was right did not make him right... Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?

Rock journalism is
people who can’t write
interviewing people who can’t talk
for people who can’t read.

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