Quotes About Interpretation

Usually people think that it is the musicians who create the music, but in fact it is music who creates the musicians.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about.

Quick music sounds dull unless every note is articulated.

There is no such thing as happy music.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

Music has a lot in com­mon with math­e­mat­ics. But in music, two and two need not make four: they add up to what­ever you wish.

The essence of higher instrumental music lays herein that one is able to express in tones that what one is unable to say in words.

No music is vulgar, unless it is played in a way that makes it so.

Music mirrors where we should go, have gone and can go. Music is an abstraction.

People aren't hearing all the music.

Too many of these writers in the music papers, they are misunderstanding everything. The disco sound is not art or anything so serious.

You always have to be diplomatic with music, with classical, with whatever you do.

Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don't like

The mental imagery involved with pianistic tactilia is not related to the striking of individual keys but rather to the rites of passage between notes.

A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.

A literary work can only be received through symbols, through concepts - for that is what words are; but cinema, like music, allows for utterly direct, emotional, sensuous perception of the work.

Just because it happened to you, doesn't mean it's interesting.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

Beethoven's last quartets were written by a deaf man and should only be listened to by a deaf man.

I do not ask for my music to be interpreted, but only for it to be played.

The duty of the words is to say just as much as the music has left unsaid and no more.

The way I feel about music is that there is no right and wrong. Only true and false.

The idea is more important than the style you're playing in.

As far as the execution is concerned ... the most frequent and most serious mistake is to follow the music instead of preceding it.