Quotes About Music

He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child. (on Liszt)

Composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.

The calm mind allows one to connect with the inner self, the Soul, the very source of our being. That's where the music lives. That's where my music comes from.

I wanted an electric train for Christmas but I got the saxophone instead.

Where does music go when it's not playing?—she asked herself. And disarmed she would answer: May they make a harp out of my nerves when I die.

She wasn't crying because of the life she led: because, never having led any other, she'd accepted that with her that was just the way things were. But I also think she was crying because, through the music, she might have guessed there were other ways of feeling

A note exists between two notes of music, between two facts exists a fact, between two grains of sand no matter how close together there exists an interval of space, a sense that exists between senses — in the interstices of primordial matter is the line of mystery and fire that is the breathing of the world, and the continual breathing of the world is what we hear and call silence.

No fundo ela não passara de uma caixinha de música meio desafinada.

And may sapphires, amethysts and emeralds spill into the dark eroticism of abundant life: because in my darkness quakes at last the great topaz. I am now listening to a sylvan music, almost just drumming and rhythm that comes from a neighboring house where young junkies live the present. Another instant of incessant, incessant rhythm, and something terrible happens to me.

As for music, where does it go? The only concrete thing in music is the instrument.

Words are sounds transfused with unequal shadows that intersect, stalactites, lace, transfigured organ music. I hardly dare shout out words at this vibrant and rich, morbid and dark web which has its countertone in the thick bass of pain. Allegro con brio. I'll try to wrest gold from charcoal.

Eu não sou um intelectual, escrevo com o corpo. E o que escrevo é uma névoa úmida. As palavras são sons transfundidos de sombras que se entrecruzam desiguais, estalactites, renda, música transfigurada de órgão.

que façam harpas de meus nervos quando eu morrer.

I see that I've never told you how I listen to music—I gently rest my hand on the record player and my hand vibrates, sending waves through my whole body: and so I listen to the electricity of the vibrations, the last substratum of reality's realm, and the world trembles inside my hands.

Between two musical notes there exists another note, between two facts there exists another fact, between two grains of sand, no matter how close together they are, there exists an interval of space, there exists a sensing between sensing—in the interstices of primordial matter there is the mysterious, fiery line that is the world's breathing, and the world's continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.

I know what I am doing here: I'm improvising. But what's wrong with that? improvising as in jazz they improvise music, jazz in fury, improvising in front of the crowd.

the miracle is the note between two notes of music, it is the number between number one and number two. To have it all you have to do is need it. Faith — is knowing you can go and eat the miracle. Hunger, that is what faith is in itself — and needing is my guarantee that to me it will always be given. Needing is my guide.

Dónde se guarda la música cuando no suena?, se preguntaba. Y, rendida, contestaba: que hagan un arpa de mis nervios cuando muera.

I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.

I want to paint the way a bird sings.

A song can be more than words and music ... when sung with soul a song carries you to another world, to a place where no matter how much pain you feel, you are never alone.

The opera is like a husband with a foreign title: expensive to support, hard to understand, and therefore a supreme social challenge.

You'll know if you're a famous composer if 20 years from now your name appears on a pull-down menu in Band in a Box, alongside Hans Zimmer.

To play the violin it is necessary to possess certain habits, skills, knowledge, and talents, to be in the mood to play, and (as the old joke goes) to have a violin. But violin playing is neither the habits, skills, knowledge and so on, nor the mood, nor . . . the violin.