Quotes About Music

What was this formalism? It literally means music, art, or writing that pays more attention to form and technique than to content. This definition seems vague and confusing, but perhaps that was the point. No one knew what it meant, any more than they knew exactly what its opposite, Socialist Realism, meant. They could mean anything

The Fourth Symphony, one of his most fascinating and ingenious works, both brutal and intricate, would go unheard for a quarter of a century, silenced by fear.

Composers, too, wanted to celebrate Russia's new modernity. The most avant-garde among them now created pieces full of dark, knotted chords and thunderous declarations, or music like sculptures of crystal: sharp, hard structures with jutting spikes and dazzling surfaces.

He was not very fond of music. Not because it didn't move him — but because it did. "It makes me want to say kind things, stupid things, and pat the heads of people," he admitted. "But now you have to beat them on the head, beat them without mercy.

If music without words can have "characters," then Shostakovich's characters are like those in the absurdist stories of his Leningrad writer friends: broad and bizarre and almost cartoonish at times, full of vivid eccentricities.

Si a literatura musical brasileira fosse vasta, eu não publicaria este livro. Porém muitas vezes tenho sofrido nos olhos dos meus discípulos a angústia dos que desejam ler. Si por um momento eu lhes minorar essa angústia, este livro terá cumprido o seu destino, pois foi isso unicamente o que pretendi.

It's pretty amazing to me that my first hit record was an Elvis Presley record.

Don't Cry Daddy is a pretty sad song. He got to the end of it and it was just real quiet and Elvis says, I'm gonna cut that someday for my daddy. And, by God, he did. He lived up to his word.

There was a chance for me to write one song for the section where Elvis sat in his black leather outfit and sang the old hits. At eight oclock the next morning I had written Memories.

Reading a piece of poetry with no beat in front of 20 people is way more challenging than rocking for 10 000 people.

Sampling is kind of prehistoric, given the technology and the textures you can create.

Love of music, of sunsets and sea; a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are not radically divergent; a similar stance as we look at the stars and think of the marvelous strangeness of the universe - these are what build a marriage. And it is never to be taken for granted.

I was just learning to play guitar when Tracy Chapman came out. She wrote these songs, she played them by herself and I so admired her for that.

The only life that matters is in your mind. The only truth is the one that lives invisibly, that waits even after you close the book. Silence, too, is a kind of music. Silence will last.

She said the music made her wonder, Does it alter us more to be heard, or to hear?

Light from the tanks found him, as if they could collect all the irreconcilable parts of his life. No matter how many lights they shone, they could never take away the darkness. Daylight was blinding, but in the dark he still existed. What did they see, he wondered, his hands still open. Of all the people he had loved and who had loved him, of all the things that he had witnessed, lived and hoped for, of all the music he had created, how much was it possible to see?

It was a time of chaos, of bombs and floods, when love songs streamed from the radios and wept down the streets. Music sustained weddings, births, rituals, work, marching, boredom, confrontation and death; music and stories, even in times like these, were a refuge, a passport, everywhere.

The concerto's beauty was even more impassioned than he remembered, and also more piteous and quiet and restrained, and he clasped his hands together to absorb both the grief and joy in his body.

The only life that matters is in your mind. The only truth is the one that live invisibly, that waits even after you close the book. Silence, too, is a kind of music. Silence will last.

For all her talent, and for all of Kai's, it was Sparrow, she knew, who had the truest gift. His music made her turn away from the never-possible and the almost-here, away from an unmade, untested future. The present, Sparrow seemed to say, is all we have, yet it is the one thing we will never learn to hold in our hands.

music is the great love of the People. If we sing a beautiful song, if we faithfully remember all the words, the People will never abandon us. Without the musician, all life would be loneliness.

revolutionary music hurts the ears after awhile. There's no nostalgia in it, no place for people to share their sorrows. Of course," Big Mother continued hurriedly,

At the bottom of all these tangled impressions she glimpsed a changed idea, another way of loving someone that she had not experienced before, an attachment like that to a brother, to a friend, to a lover who could never be her lover, of a musical soulmate, a companion who might have been a lifelong collaborator.

It was very modern and deeply western to listen to music that no one else could hear. Private music led to private thoughts. Private thoughts led to private desires, to private fulfillments or private hungers, to a whole private universe away from parents, family and society.