MUSIC QUOTES III
quotations about music
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
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 is another lady that talks charmingly and says nothing.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
Toyish airs please trivial ears.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
JOHN MILTON
Arcades
O Music! language of the soul,
Of love, of God to man;
Bright beam from heaven thrilling,
That lightens sorrow's weight.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
"Apostrophe," Imogen and Other Poems
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"
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 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"
What defines someone's music taste is their teens and early 20s. It's that combination of your sexual awakening and the music of the time, it fixes you forever.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
interview, The Quietus, September 23, 2010
Every man is full of music; but it is not every man that knows how to bring it out.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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--"
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
JEAN COCTEAU
Le Coq et l'Arlequin
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 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 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
Music is the exaltation of the mind derived from things eternal, bursting forth in sound.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Summa Theologica
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have here below.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
I wish my life had background music so I could understand what the hell is going on.
ANONYMOUS