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How irksome is this music to my heart!When such strings jar, what hope of harmony?
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How light the touches are that kissThe music from the chords of life!
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How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!Here will we sit and let the sounds of musicCreep in our ears: soft stillness, and the nightBecomes the touches of sweet harmony.
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Humphrey Salter (1683). The Genteel Companion.
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I am advised to give her music o' mornings; they say it will penetrate.
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I can't sing. As a singist I am not a success. I am saddest when I sing. So are those who hear me. They are sadder even than I am.
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I even think that, sentimentally, I am disposed to harmony. But organically I am incapable of a tune.
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I might as well endeavour to perswade, that the Sun is a glorious, and beneficial Planet; as take pains to Illustrate Musick with my imperfect praises; for every reasonable Mans own mind will be its Advocate. Musick, belov'd of Heaven, for it is the business of Angels; Desired on Earth as the most charming Pleasure of Men. The world contains nothing that is good, but what is full of Harmonious Concord, nor nothing that is evil, but is its opposite, as being the ill favour'd production of Discord and Disorder. I dare affirm, those that love not Musick (if there be any such) are Dissenters from Ingenuity, and Rebels to the Monarchy of Reason.
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I was ... attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing “simple” music, blamed for deserting “modernism,” accused of renouncing my “true Russian heritage.” People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried “sacrilege”: “The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone.” To them all my answer was and is the same: You “respect,” but I love.
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I'm saddest when I sing.
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I'm the sweetest sound in orchestra heardYet in orchestra never have been.
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Ian Stewart, Another Fine Math You’ve Got Me Into (1992) p. 236
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If music and sweet poetry agree.
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If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die.
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If music be the food of love, play on;Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,The appetite may sicken, and so die.That strain again! it had a dying fall:O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet soundThat breathes upon a bank of violets,Stealing and giving odour.