Quotations About Music
A B C
D E
F G
H I
J K
L M
N O
P Q
R S
T U
V W
X Y
Z
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Compiled by Rich Finlinson, mailto:rfinlinson@media.utah.edu
http://www.uen.org, Anne Wanderman http://www.ldresources.com
and Michael F. Moody
Updated: Wednesday, June 28, 2000
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A
Art will not only open the door to children's
creativity and imagination, but it will give them the problem-solving and communication skills they'll need to
meet the challenges of the 21st century.
-- Jane Alexander
When we teach a child to draw, we teach him
how to see. When we teach a child to play a musical instrument, we teach her how to listen. When we teach a child
to dance, we teach him how to move through life with grace. When we tach a child to read and write, we teach her
how to think. When we nurture imaginatioon, we create a better world, one child at a time.
-- Jane Alexander
We know an age more vividly through its music
than its historians.
-- Rosanne Ambrose-Brown
I do not think of myself as unusually creative.
I think we all come from the creator, each human being streaming with the glory. So each one of us is creative.
--Maya Angelou
Music washes away from the soul the dust of
everyday life.
-- Red Auerbach
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people
do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
-- W.H. Auden
B
My masters are strange folk with very little care for music in them.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
Love is like a violin. The music may stop now
and then, but the strings remain forever.
-- June Masters Bacher
My masters are strange folk with very little
care for music in them.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
I need a steady, quiet life.
-- Ludwig Van Beethoven
My heart is full of many things...there are
moments when I feel that speech is nothing after all.
-- Ludwig Van Beethoven
Do not wholly forget me when I am dead.
-- Ludwig Van Beethoven
The art of music is so deep and profound that
to approach it very seriously only is not enough. One must approach music with serious rigor and, at the same time,
with a great, affectionate joy.
-- Nadia Boulanger
Music binds us together with invisible threads.
-- Pam Brown
Why speak of time travel? We have a tried and
proven method with us. Music moves us across centuries and continents without ever leaving our chairs.
-- Pam Brown
Let us sing of the days that are gone, Maggie,
when you and I were young.
-- Johnson Butterfield
A lot of people are singing about how screwed
up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time.
-- Mariah Carey
Music is well said to be the speech of angels;
in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.
-- Thomas Carlyle
Oh how we'll make this chorus swell. All is
well. All is well.
-- William Clayton
I shall try to give dignity to my forms.
-- Claude-Achille Debussy
The high note is not the only thing.
-- Placido Domingo
A nation that allows music to be expendable
is in danger of becoming expendable itself.
-- Richard Dreyfuss
Mozart is sweet sunshine.
-- Antonin Dvorak
So to live is heaven; to make undying music
in the world.
-- George Eliot (Marian Evans Cross)
Music whispers to us dim secrets that startle
our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal,
and yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every genuine work of art has as much reason
for being as the earth and the sun.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have
a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit
in every work of art.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Music is the voice of all sorrow, all joy.
It needs no translation.
-- Helen Exley
We hear the desert singing, carry on, carry
on, carry on.
-- Ruth Max Fox
If I am such a legend, why am I so lonely?
-- Judy Garland
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
The effects of good music are not just because
it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.
-- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Music is the voice of all humanity, of whatever
time or place. In its presence we are one.
-- Charlotte Gray
The business leaders of tomorrow will need
what the arts can give them. They need to see and hear and feel the world. They need to lead with vision and passion.
Adn these are the characteristics our young people develop when they are encouraged to participate in the arts.
-- Richard Gurin
We cannot appreciate the arts unless we become
involved with them on some level, and one cannot become involved with music without becoming immersed in all of
the arts.
-- Sharlene Habermeyer
Music students are developing those areas of
the brain that expand human creativity. They broaden their thoughts of originality, independence, curiosity, and
flexibility, as they interpret, analyze, and break apart music in new and interesting ways.
-- Sharlene Habermeyer
You simply cannot study music and the arts
without feeling joy, happiness, love, tenderness, sorrow, humor, and so one, and when we allow these emotions to
be a part of the laearning process, our education become richer, more meaningful, longer lasting, and has greater
impact in our lives.
-- Sharlene Habermeyer
I did think I did see all Heaven before me
-- and the great God himself.
-- George Fideric Handel
The music at a wedding procession always reminds
me of the music of soldiers going into battle.
-- Heinrich Heine
There is music in my soul today, a carol to
my King, and Jesus listening can hear the songs I cannot sing.
-- Eliza E. Hewitt
Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.
-- Buddy Holly
Country music is three chords and the truth.
-- Harlan Howard
Music expresses that which can not be said
and on which it is impossible to be silent.
--Victor Hugo
Music, drawing, books, invention and exercise
will be so many resources to you against ennui.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Out of respect for things that I was never
destined to do, I have learned that my strengths are a result of my weaknesses, my success is due to my failures
and my style is directly related to my limitations.
--Billy Joel
Some of the greatest sermons are preached by
the singing of hymns.
-- Spencer W. Kimball
Because I am a storyteller I live by words.
Perhaps music is a purer art form. It may be that when we communicate with life on another planet, it will be through
music, not through language or words.
-- Madeleine L'Engle
What would you do if I sang out of key, would
you stand up and walk out on me? Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song, and I'll try not so sing out of key.
-- John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Lift up your hearts and sing me a song that
was a hit before your mother was born. Though she was born a long, long time ago, your mother should know, your
mother should know.
-- John Lennon and Paul McCartney
There is a thin line between genius and insanity.
I have erased this line.
-- Oscar Levant
Once I make up my mind, I'm full of indecision.
-- Oscar Levant
We are so much like violins
Frames, with sensitive strings
The touch of a hand
That holds the bow
Determines the music it brings.
--Edna Machesny
Just a song at twilight, when the lights are
low, and the flick'ring shadows softly come and go.
-- Bingham Malloy
The truest expression of a people is in its
dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
-- Agnes De Mille
Berlin was a kind of orchestrated hell -- a
terrible symphony of light and flame.
-- Edward R. Murrow
Without music, life would be an error. The
German imagines even God singing songs.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Count your many blessings every doubt will
fly, and you will be singing as the days go by.
-- Johnson Oatman, Jr.
If I don't practice for one day, I know it;
if I don't practice for two days, the critics know it; if I don't practice for three days, the audience knows it.
--Jan Paderewski
Good tidings are sounding to us and each nation.
--William W. Phelps
Musical training is a more potent instrument
than any other for education.
-- Plato
If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance,
and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong.
-- Simon Rattle
Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.
-- Gioacchino Antonio Rossini
Music has brought me some of the highest moments
of my life. I don't even hear the music. I don't even hear the notes. I'm not aware that someone has turned on
a tape machine--I'm in another world.
-- Jane Seymour
If music be the food of love, play on.
-- William Shakespeare
Is it not strange that sheep's guts should
hale souls out of men's bodies?
-- William Shakespeare
Though joyous mirth and song surround me, my
heart, my soul still yearn for you.
-- Evan Stephens
An unseen power will aid you and me in the
glorious cause of truth.
-- Evan Stephens
Let our song still our joy and praise prolong.
-- Evan Stephens
Too many pieces of music finish too long after
the end.
--Igor Stravinsky
The most perfect expression of human behavior
is a string quartet.
-- Jeffrey Tate
If you knew nothing of Tchaikovsky's personal
life, would yo say that the Nutcracker is the work of a desperately unhappy man?
--Deems Taylor
The Romeo and Juliet fantasy is romantic, dramatic,
lyric, tragic, if you like. But its tragedy is only the elevated, cleansing, almost stimulating tragedy of the
original story.
--Deems Taylor
How much actual reflection of Mozart's unhappy
life do you find in his music? Almost none at all. Most of his greatest works were written during his worst years,
financially, but you will find little in them of gloom or despair.
--Deems Taylor
Mozart did write a requiem mass virtually for
his own death, but just before that he had written a successful musical comedy, The Magic Flute, the champagne
of whose score still sparkles.
--Deems Taylor
Sousa was no Beethoven. Nevertheless he was
Sousa. The Stars and Stripes Forever, it is safe to say, is better liked in many lands than the Stars and Stripes
themselves. Wherever men march, they march, sooner or later, to the music of John Philip Sousa.
--Deems Taylor
The very thing that distinguishes a great artist...is
his faculty of complete detachment, his ability to stand over his small, weak, everyday self and force that self
to the artistic task at hand, whatever that may be.
--Deems Taylor
If you want to know what a bad time Wagner
had during the fifties and sixties, go to his letters, not his music. In the the former you will find the outpourings
of a tormented and discouraged man. In the latter you will find only triumphant achievements...
--Deems Taylor
I know that sooner or later I will no longer
be able to battle with life's difficulties.
-- Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
What can I expect from the future? It is terrible
to think of it.
-- Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
It is bitter, yet so sweet, to lose oneself
in the past.
-- Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
I was painfully conscious of the lack of connection
between Shakespeare's Romeo and my own bitter-sweet moanings.
-- Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Ring out the old, ring in the new. Ring out
the false, ring in the true.
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson
Through music we may wander where we will in
time, and find friends in every century.
-- Helen Thomson
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
-- Mark Twain
Messiah like any transcendent work of genius, escapes boundaries of creed and nation.
-- Herbert Weinstock
Jazz came to America three hundred years ago
in chains.
-- Paul Whiteman
Most rock journalism is people who can not
write interviewing people who can not talk.
-- Frank Zappa
If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk
you can sing.
-- Zimbabwe Proverb