Motivational Quotes

Music

I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated.

- Brown, James

Best Quotes about Music

Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!

J. K. Rowling

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

Zappa, Frank

People compose for many reasons: to become immortal; because the pianoforte happens to be open; because they want to become a millionaire; because of the praise of friends; because they have looked into a pair of beautiful eyes; for no reason whatsoever.

Schumann, Robert

We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him -- if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us.

Brook, Peter (Stephen Paul)

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

Davis, Miles

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

Wilson, Colin

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

Oscar Wilde

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.

Ed Gardner

10.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

Carlyle, Thomas

11.

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.

Thomas, Lewis

12.

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

Martin Luther

13.

Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.

Genet, Jean

14.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

15.

The manner in which Americans consume music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie --it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made.

Zappa, Frank

16.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

17.

After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Huxley, Aldous

18.

In sweet music is such art: killing care and grief of heart fall asleep, or hearing, die.

William Shakespeare

19.

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking,'Is there a meaning to music?'My answer would be,'Yes.'And'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?'My answer to that would be,'No.'

Aaron Copland

20.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

21.

The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.

Virgil Thomson

22.

Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

Morrison, Van

23.

The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. If the composer withholds more than we anticipate, we experience a delicious falling sensation; we feel we have been torn from a stable point on the musical ladder and thrust into the void. When the composer withholds less, the opposite occurs: he forces us to perform gymnastic exercises more skillful than our own.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

24.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

25.

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

Cocteau, Jean

26.

I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.

Sir Edward Appleton

27.

There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.

Pound, Ezra

28.

I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it in front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.

Taylor, James

29.

When griping grief the heart doth wound, and doleful dumps the mind opresses, then music, with her silver sound, with speedy help doth lend redress.

William Shakespeare

30.

Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.

William Shakespeare

31.

It was called the Backstreet Market, and it was just like a local hangout. That was where the kids would drive their cars, hang out with their convertibles and listen to music. That's how we got Backstreet. We put Boys on it, because no matter how old we get, we'll always be boys.

Richardson, Kevin

32.

I've outdone anyone you can name -- Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

Brown, James

33.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

34.

Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.

John Erskine

35.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Einstein, Albert

36.

It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of culture.

Cage, John

37.

I resent performing for frisking idiots who don't know anything.

Lennon, John

38.

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.

Johnson, Samuel

39.

Next to theology I give music the highest place of honor.

Luther, Martin

40.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.