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Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.
-Leonard Bernstein
The Unanswered Question p. 140, 1976
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The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.
-Leonard Bernstein
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Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I'd try a revolver first.
-Josh Billings
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Nothing is more singular about this generation than its addiction to music.
-Allan Bloom
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Music of all the arts has the most influence on the passions and the legislator should give it the greatest encouragement.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
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Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.
-Christian Nevell Bovee
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It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony.
-Benjamin Britten
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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.
-Peter (Stephen Paul) Brook
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I've outdone anyone you can name -- Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.
-James Brown
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I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated.
-James Brown
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Sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is music where ever there is a harmony, order, or proportion: and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.
-Sir Thomas Browne
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I went to the Bach Choir concert and heard Mozart's Requiem. I did not rise warmly to it. Then I heard an extract from Parsifal which I disliked very much. If Bach wriggles, Wagner writhes...
-Samuel Butler
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, 1912
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It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
-Samuel Butler
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As I define it, rock and roll is dead. The attitude isn't dead, but the music is no longer vital. It doesn't have the same meaning. The attitude, though, is still very much alive -- and it still informs other kinds of music.
-David Byrne
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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.
-John Milton Cage
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I could not accept the academic idea that the purpose of music was communication, because I noticed that when I conscientiously wrote something sad, people and critics were often apt to laugh. I determined to give up composition unless I could find a better reason for doing it than communication. I found this answer from Gira Sarabhai, an Indian singer and tabla player: The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences. I also found in the writings of Ananda K. Coomaraswammy that the responsibility of the artist is to imitate nature in her manner of operation. I became less disturbed and went back to work.
http://www.newalbion.com/artists/cagej/autobiog.html
-John Milton Cage
An Autobiographical Statement
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We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.
-John Milton Cage
An Autobiographical Statement
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Percussion music is revolution. Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to the restrictions of nineteenth century music. Today we are fighting for their emancipation. Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom. At the present stage of revolution, a healthy lawlessness is warranted. Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything-tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes-anything we can lay our hands on. Not only hitting, but rubbing, scraping, making sound in every possible way...What we can't do ourselves will be done by machines which we will invent.
-John Milton Cage
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Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.
-Albert Camus
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A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time.
-Mariah Carey
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If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.
-Thomas Carlyle
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One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music.
-Thomas Carlyle
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Song is the heroics of speech.
-Thomas Carlyle
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Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
-Thomas Carlyle
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It's a marvelous feeling when someone says I want to do this song of yours because they've connected to it. That's what I'm after.
-Mary Chapin Carpenter
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Books about Music
