View Quote
Water and air He for the Tenor chose,Earth made the Base, the Treble Flame arose,To th' active Moon a quick brisk stroke he gave,To Saturn's string a touch more soft and grave.The motions strait, and round, and swift, and slow,And short and long, were mixt and woven so,Did in such artful Figures smoothly fall,As made this decent measur'd Dance of all.And this is Musick.
View Quote
We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams,Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams;World-losers and world-forsakers, Of whom the pale moon gleams:Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems.
View Quote
We can no longer maintain any distinction between music and discourse about music, between the supposed object of analysis and the terms of analysis.
View Quote
We consider classical music to be the epitome and quintessence of our culture, because it is that culture’s clearest, most significant gesture and expression. In this music we possess the heritage of classical antiquity and Christianity, a spirit of serenely cheerful and brave piety, a superbly chivalric morality. For in the final analysis every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behavior concentrated into a gesture.
View Quote
We get nearer to the Lord through music than perhaps through any other thing except prayer.
View Quote
We give our souls to our music. We put our lives on the ****ing wax and the labels treat us like shit.
View Quote
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
View Quote
We must ask whether a cross-cultural musical universal is to be found in the music itself (either its structure or function) or the way in which music is made. By 'music-making,' I intend not only actual performance but also how music is heard, understood, even learned.
View Quote
We must see that music theory is not only about music, but about how people process it. To understand any art, we must look below its surface into the psychological details of its creation and absorption.
View Quote
We would liken music to Aladdin’s lamp — worthless in itself, not so for the spirits which obey its call. We love it for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings, it can summon with a touch.
View Quote
We're blues people. And blues never lets tragedy have the last word.
View Quote
What fairy-like music steals over the sea,Entrancing our senses with charmed melody?
View Quote
What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector.
View Quote
What woful stuff this madrigal would beIn some starv'd hackney sonnetteer, or me!But let a Lord once own the happy lines,How the wit brightens! how the style refines!
View Quote
When I was young and had no senseI bought a fiddle for eighteen pence,And all the tunes that I could playWas, "Over the Hills and Far Away."