Music is the perfect type of art. Music can never reveal its ultimate secret. This, also, is the explanation of the value of limitations in art. The sculptor gladly surrenders imitative colour, and the painter the actual dimensions of form, because by such renunciations they are able to avoid too definite a presentation of the Real, which would be mere imitation, and too definite a realisation of the Ideal, which would be too purely intellectual. It is through its very incompleteness that art becomes complete in beauty, and so addresses itself, not to the faculty of recognition nor to the faculty of reason, but to the aesthetic sense alone, which, while accepting both reason and recognition as stages of apprehension, subordinates them both to a pure synthetic impression of the work of art as a whole, and, taking whatever alien emotional elements the work may possess, uses their very complexity as a means by which a richer unity may be added to the ultimate impression itself.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity the sound achieved by the pig.
—Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British-born American Film Director, Film Producer
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.
—George Gershwin (1898–1937) American Composer, Pianist
Music is essentially useless, as life is.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
Music is the fourth great material want of our nature,—first food, then raiment, then shelter, then music.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American Writer, Aphorist
Cherish your visions. Cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.
—James Allen (1864–1912) British Philosophical Writer
A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.
—Colin Wilson (b.1931) British Philosopher, Novelist
The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Next to theology I give to music the highest place and honor. And we see how David and all the saints have wrought their godly thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song.
—Martin Luther (1483–1546) German Protestant Theologian
Next to theology I give music the highest place of honor.
—Martin Luther (1483–1546) German Protestant Theologian
We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn’t speak or talk like a human being, that doesn’t know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.
—John Cage (1912–92) American Composer
All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.
—Walter Pater (1839–94) English Critic, Essayist
There is nothing more difficult than talking about music.
—Camille Saint-Saens (1835–1921) French Composer, Music Critic
The author’s conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
Music is the space between the notes.
—Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French Composer
No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.
—Frank Zappa (1940–93) American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer
Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of “culture.”
—John Cage (1912–92) American Composer
If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.
—African Proverb
You are the music while the music lasts.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
When griping grief the heart doth wound, and doleful dumps the mind oppress, then music, with her silver sound, with speedy help doth lend redress.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
The manner in which Americans “consume” music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie—it’s consumed that way without any regard for how and why it’s made.
—Frank Zappa (1940–93) American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer
Song is the heroics of speech.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (1821–81) Swiss Moral Philosopher, Poet, Critic
To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
—Aaron Copland (1900–90) American Composer, Pianist, Conductor
Any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State… when modes of music change, the State always changes with them.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
Music is the medicine of the breaking heart.
—Alfred William Hunt (1830–96) British Painter
Leave a Reply