Music Quotes - Page 31

• The first typical adolescent of modern times was Wagner's Siegfried. : the music of Siegfried expressed for the first time that combination of (provisional) purity, physical strength, naturism, spontaneity and joie de vivre which was to make the adolescent the hero of our twentieth century, the century of adolescence.

  Philippe Aries

  Strength, Hero, Typical

  Philippe Ariès (1962). “Centuries of childhood: a social history of family life”, Vintage

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• Music and Wine are one.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wine, Musician

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “Emerson's Literary Criticism”, p.71, U of Nebraska Press

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• In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also; as the green grass.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Color, Snakes, Elephants

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.53, Harvard University Press

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• Two touch the string,
  The harp is dumb.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Two, Solitude, Dumb

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Poems”, p.152, The Floating Press

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• How pleasant it is to be ignorant! Not to know exactly who Mozart was, to ignore his origin, his influence, the details of his technique! To just let him lead one by the hand.

  Maria Luisa Bombal

  Hands, Ignorant, Technique

  Arturo Torres-Rioseco, Félix Pita Rodríguez, Lino Novás Calvo, Horacio Quiroga, Francisco Ayala (1967). “Short stories of Latin America”

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• The feelings that Beethoven put into his music were the feelings of a god. There was something olympian in his snarls and rages, and there was a touch of hellfire in his mirth.

  H. L. Mencken

  Feelings, Mirth, Rage

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.524, Vintage

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• Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah

  H. L. Mencken

  Home, Musician, Week

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• Debussy--A pretty girl with one blue eye and one brown one.

  H. L. Mencken

  Girl, Eye, Blue

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• Chopin--Two embalmers at work upon a minor poetthe scent of tuberosesAutumn rain.

  H. L. Mencken

  Rain, Two, Scent

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• If you love music hear it; go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you; but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light; brings him into a great deal of bad company; and takes up a great deal of time, which might be much better employed.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Play, Light, Gentleman

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• Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation, being absolutely necessary to excel in either; which, in my opinion, is by no means the case of music, though called a liberal art, and now in Italy placed even above the other two--a proof of the decline of that country.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Country, Art, Strong

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• Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
  Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
  A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
  And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she
  sings.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Mother, Children, Years

  D.H. Lawrence (1961). “Selected Poems”

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• The glamour
  Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
  Down in the flood of remembrance.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Maturity, Remembrance, Childhood

  'Piano' (1918)

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• 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!

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Beautiful, Sublime, Mind

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• How soar sweet music is, when time is broke, and no proportion kept!

  William Shakespeare

  Sweet, Broke, Proportion

  William Shakespeare (1823). “The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare”, p.258

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• I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

  William Shakespeare

  Sweet, Venice, Shylock

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 5, sc. 1, l. 69

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• Music is 'significant form,' and its significance is that of a symbol, a highly articulated, sensuous object, which by virtue of its dynamic structure can express the forms of vital experience which language is peculiarly unfit to convey. Feeling, life, motion and emotion constitute its import.

  Susanne Katherina Langer

  Feelings, Emotion, Language

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• Music is our myth of the inner life.

  Susanne Katherina Langer

  Music Is, Myth, Inner Life

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• It is agreed that all sound which is the material of music is of three sorts. First is harmonica, which consists of vocal music; second is organica, which is formed from the breath; third is rhythmica, which receives its numbers from the beat of the fingers. For sound is produced either by the voice, coming through the throat; or by the breath, coming through the trumpet or tibia, for example; or by touch, as in the case of the cithara or anything else that gives a tuneful sound on being struck.

  Isidore of Seville

  Voice, Numbers, Giving

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• Music stands in a much closer connection with pure sensation than any of the other arts.

  Hermann von Helmholtz

  Art, Connections, Pure

  Hermann von Helmholtz, Alexander John Ellis (1875). “On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music”, p.3, London : Longmans, Green and Company

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• to deny that music powerfully influences our thoughts and conduct is either ignorant or a deliberate lie. Anyone who listens to music has been moved by it. It's music, that's the point.

  Dessa Darling

  Lying, Ignorant, Influence

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• The mastery of one's phonemes may be compared to the violinist's mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor's renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Order, Play, May

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• The music world has taken a huge dump, so maybe there's a connection. So if Apple decided to do this, maybe they do their own version ... whatever they want to do it's a home run for music. Unless they screw it up, and try to put something on it so that they can own it - I'm calling it out, proprietary formats are not a good thing.

  Neil Young

  Running, Taken, Home

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• It's a creative enterprise, just like art, just like painting, music. Creating something can be done in different categories, so to do it in film is just another expression, which is great. Because it translates so well because so many people see the work, if you're lucky.

  Robert Redford

  Art, Expression, Creating

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• Colorblind racism is the new racial music most people dance to, the 'new racism' is subtle, institutionalized and seemingly nonracial.

  Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

  Racism, People, Subtle

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