Quotes About Music

I hate Toscanini. I've never heard him in a concert hall, but I've heard enough of his recordings. What he does to music is terrible in my opinion. He chops it up into a hash and then pours a disgusting sauce over it. Toscanin 'honoured' me by conducting my symphonies. I heard those recordings, too, and they're worthless.

The Seventh and Eighth symphonies are my requiem.

The Eighth [Quartet] is an autobiographical quartet, it quotes a song known to all Russians 'Exhausted by the hardships of prison'.

This quality of Jewish folk music [- it can appear to be happy when it's tragic-] is close to my idea of what music should be. The should always be two layers in music.

Really, we musicians do like to talk about Mussorgsky. In fact, I think that it's the second most favourite topic after Tchaikovsky's love life.

I don't renounce my interest in gypsy songs. I don't see anything shameful in it, as opposed to, say, Prokofiev, who pretended to be enraged when he heard such music. He probably had a better musical education than I did. But at least I'm not a snob.

The majority of my symphonies are tombstones. Too many of our people died and were buried in places unknown to anyone, not even their relatives. It happened to many of my friends. Where do you put the tombstones for Meyerhold or Tukhachevsky? Only music can do that for them. Looking back, I see nothing but ruins, only mountains of corpses... I'm not exaggerating, I mean mountains... I'm sad, I'm grieving all the time.

Glazunov was the first to convince me that a composer must make the performers submit to his will, and not the other way around (...) The composer must orchestrate in the way he conceived his work, and not simplify his orchestration to please the performers.

There should always be a harmonious combination of the senses and the intellect.

I don't see anything shameful in [gypsy songs] as opposed to, say, Prokofiev, who pretended to be enraged when he heard such music. He probably had a better musical education than I di. But at least I'm not a snob.

I'd think learning to play the guitar would be very confusing for sighted people.

What pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them?

I'm gonna be making records anyway, even if I had to sell 'em out of the trunk of my car. I'm that kind of musician and singer.

If you talk bad about country music, it's like saying bad things about my momma. Them's fightin' words

I think of country radio like a great lover: you were nice to me, you gave me a lot of cool stuff, and then you dumped my ass for another woman.

She cared so much about her words, her creative expression, when what mattered to everyone else was the bottom line. Everything was a business--even art. She'd written the songs, but she wouldn't be able to truly own them. Not if she wanted the rest of the world to hear them.

Female singers should just be sprinkled into airplay now and again as garnish. "'The tomatoes of our salad are the females,'" Ruthanna said. "That was his exact quote. And that's why they call it Tomato-gate.

I just like horny songs.

DOLLY INCLUDED THIS SONG ON HER Blue Smoke collection of 2014. "Try" is also a cornerstone song on the soundtrack of a 2020 Netflix original musical Christmas on the Square.

She talked about working around the clock and barely having time to eat, about sweating blood trying to make enough money to pay the band, the production staff, the promoters, the organizers, and the concert spaces, "not to mention forking out a regular four figures on your spangly outfits." "It's not a normal way to live," Ruthanna had said. Tell me more, was all AnnieLee could think.

The doc swore she came out screamin' in the key of E.

I flapped open the lid of my cardboard guitar case and whipped out my old Martin. Mr. Killen seemed a little taken aback. I think he wasn't sure whether I was going to play the guitar or brain him with it. He breathed a sigh of relief when I went into a song. Bill hustled his guitar out as fast as he could and joined in. I sang loud and strong with the security that comes with knowing that one way or another, it'll be over soon.

Who was it had said when you fall in love all the popular songs suddenly seemed to mean something.

If in the after life there is not music, we will have to import it.