B quotes

View Quote Despite the fact that as an art, music cannot compromise its principles, and politics, on the other hand, is the art of compromise, when politics transcends the limits of the present existence and ascents to the higher sphere of the possible, it can be joined there by music. Music is the art of the imaginary par excellence, an art free of all limits imposed by words, an art that touches the depth of human existence, and art of sounds that crosses all borders. As such, music can take the feelings and imagination of Israelis and Palestinians to new unimaginable spheres.

View Quote Daniel Barenboim, statement at the Knesset upon receiving the Wolf Prize, May 9, 2004, transcript online (16 May 2004) at The Electronic Intifada.

View Quote Ancient belief in a cosmos composed of spheres, producing music as angels guided them through the heavens, was still flourishing in Elizabethan times. ...There is a good deal more to Pythagorean musical theory than celestial harmony. Besides the music of the celestial spheres (musica mundana), two other varieties of music were distinguished: the sound of instruments...(musica instrumentalis), and the continuous unheard music that emanated from the human body (musica humana), which arises from a resonance between the body and the soul. ...In the medieval world, the status of music is revealed by its position within the Quadrivium—the fourfold curriculum—alongside arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Medieval students... believed all forms of harmony to derive from a common source. Before Boethius' studies in the ninth century, the idea of musical harmony was not considered independently of wider matters of celestial or ethical harmony.

View Quote John D. Barrow, The Artful Universe (1995)

View Quote Our sensitivity to changes of pitch ... is underused in musical sound. Western music, in particular, is based on scales that use pitch changes that are at least twenty times bigger than the smallest changes that we could perceive. If we used our discriminatory power to full, we could generate an undulating sea of sound that displayed continuously changing frequency rather like the undersea sonic songs of dolphins and whales.

View Quote John D. Barrow, The Artful Universe (1995)

View Quote Someday you will be a man, And you will be the leader of a big old band. Many people coming from miles around To hear you play your music when the sun go down Maybe someday your name will be in lights Saying Johnny B. Goode tonight.

View Quote Chuck Berry, Johnny B. Goode, Chuck Berry Is on Top (1958)

View Quote The ascetic Gotama … avoids watching dancing, singing, music and shows. He abstains from using garlands, perfumes, cosmetics, ornaments and adornments. … He refrains from running errands, from buying and selling.

View Quote Gautama Buddha, Digha Nikaya, M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 1, verse 1.10, p. 69

View Quote Monks, you should dwell with the doors to your senses well-guarded. ...On hearing a sound with the ear, do not grasp at any theme or details by which — if you were to dwell without restraint over the faculty of the ear — evil, unskillful qualities such as greed or distress might assail you. Practice for its restraint. Guard the faculty of the ear. Secure your restraint with regard to the faculty of the ear.

View Quote Gautama Buddha, Kumma Sutta, as translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

View Quote Bhikkhus, you should train thus: 'We will guard the doors of our sense faculties. On hearing a sound with the ear, we will not grasp at its signs and features. Since, if we left the ear faculty unguarded, evil unwholesome states of covetousness and grief might invade us, we will practice the way of its restraint, we will guard the ear faculty, we will undertake the restraint of the ear faculty.'

View Quote Gautama Buddha, Mahā-Assapura Sutta, Sutta 39, Verse 8, Majjhima Nikaya, as translated by Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi (Wisdom Publications: 1995), p. 364

View Quote Oh, that I wereThe viewless spirit of a lovely sound,A living voice, a breathing harmony,A bodiless enjoyment—born and dyingWith the blest tone which made me!

View Quote Lord Byron, Manfred (1817), Act I, scene ii.