Quotes About Interpretation

Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.

But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.

Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.

Journalists say my music is "blue wave," or "dreamy," or "jangly-slacker jewel," and none of it really makes sense to me.

My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.

There's a certain line between jokes and music and poetry that's a bit blurred in my mind.

Musicians always have music in their heads about their perceptions of the world.

A musicologist is a man who can read music but cannot hear it.

I need to be able to play the music, and so I don't like to have intimidation be part of it.

If you play the very subtle jazz tunes with acoustic pianos, acoustic bass and it's a dead standard, you are going to play very differently. It depends on the music.

It [abstract art] should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed after a while you may like it or you may not.

Concerts are never real music, you have to give up the idea of hearing in them all the most beautiful things of art.

Here's how I understand music. If you can play the same bunch of noise twice, it's music. To go beyond that is supercilious and pontificating.

God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way.

Literature is painting, architecture, and music.

I do not write experimental music. My experimenting is done before I make the music. Afterwards it is the listener who must experiment.

I don't need words. It's all in the phrasing.

What matters in modern music is not the part you can write down, the words and the tune, but the rest - the texture, the atmosphere, the references and associations.

A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.

The power and magic of music lie in its intangibility and its limitlessness. It suggests images, but leaves us free to choose them and to accommodate them to our pleasure.

I can look at a fine art photograph and sometimes I can hear music.

The music takes over the words and makes them speak to me in another language.

Music is about communication... it isn't just something that maybe physically sounds good or orally sounds interesting; it's something far, far deeper than that.

I believe that interpretation should be like a transparent glass, a window for the composer's music.