MUSIC QUOTES III
quotations about music
The inner nature of man is the province of music.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
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
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"
Music may appeal to crude and coarse feelings or to refined and noble ones; and in so far as it does the latter it awakens the higher nature and works an effect, though but a transitory effect, of a beneficial kind. But the primary purpose of music is neither instruction nor culture but pleasure; and this is an all-sufficient purpose.
HERBERT SPENCER
Facts and Comments
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"
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
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--"
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have here below.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
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
Everything is music for the born musician.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Jean-Christophe
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
Music ... is the frozen tapioca in the ice sheet of History.
DONALD BARTHELME
"Conversations with Goethe"
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 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
Music is another lady that talks charmingly and says nothing.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Hark to the music! How beneath the strain
Of reckless revelry, vibrates and sobs
One fundamental chord of constant pain,
The pulse-beat of the poet's heart that throbs.
EMMA LAZARUS
"Chopin"
Music is a total constant. That's why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person.
SARAH DESSEN
Just Listen
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
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 music, yearning like a God in pain.
JOHN KEATS
"The Eve of Saint Agnes"