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And he does the same thing when the piano tuner's here!

Keep Music Live!

Jerry Rosen, former Boston Symphony Orchestra violinist
Listening to music on records is like getting kissed over the telephone.

Bill Dobbins, jazz pianist, composer and arranger
It's more like eating a picture of food.

David H. Bailey, New Hampshire composer, arranger and teacher
I disagree with Rosen's quote -- recordings are the photographs that spark our aural memories.

Some Favourite Quotes About Music

Author unknown
I like jazz, except when it sounds as though the musicians are making it up as they go along.

What do you get when you put a diminished chord together with an augmented chord?
A demented chord.

Musica laetitiae comes medicina dolorum.
Music is the companion of joy and the medicine of sorrow.

Song title:
You don’t have to join the Ku Klux Klan to be a wizard under the sheets!

Album Title:
Songs I Learnt At My Mother's Knee (and some other low joints)

Guido D'Arezzo (995-1050)
Musicorum et cantorum magna est distantia,
Isti dicunt, illi sciunt, quae componit Musica.
Nam qui facit, quod non sapit, diffinitur bestia.

Great is the distance between composers and performers:
The latter say, the former know, how music works.
Doing something without understanding it is what an animal does.

W. H. Auden (1907-73)
Music,
which can be made anywhere,
Is invisible and does not smell

The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected. The eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
The Dyer's Hand [1962]

The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.

Berthold Auerbach
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

J.S. Bach (1685-1750)
The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul. If heed is not paid to this, it is not true music but a diabolical bawling and twanging.

You just have to press the right keys and the right pedals at the right time and the music plays itself.

I have always kept one end in view, namely, with all good will to conduct a well-regulated church music to the honour of God.

Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.

Thomas Beecham (1879-1961)
Composers should write tunes the chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) [on the Well-Tempered Clavier]
This is not a brook [Bach means "brook" in German], it’s an ocean.

Leonard Bernstein
We musicians, like everyone else, are numb with sorrow at this murder, and with rage at the senselessness of the crime. But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. And with each note we will honor the spirit of John Kennedy, commemorate his courage, and reaffirm his faith in the Triumph of the Mind.
from Tribute to John F. Kennedy Speech made at United Jewish Appeal benefit Madison Square Garden, New York - 25 November 1963

Jacques Bonnet (d 1724)
The music of the church must be expressive ... The passions of opera are cold in comparison to those of our church music.

Victor Borge (1909-2000)
Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

Borodin
Respectable people do not write music or make love as a career.

Johannes Brahms
"If there is anyone here who I have not offended tonight, I beg his pardon."
-Johannes Brahms (who was noted for his bad manners) upon leaving a party one
night in Vienna.

Hans von Bülow (1830-94)
In the beginning there was rhythm.

John Cage (1912-1992)
If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?

My favourite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.

John Calvin (1509-64)
In truth we know by experience that song has great force and vigour to move and inflame the hearts of men to invoke and praise God with a more vehement and ardent zeal.

Henry Cleveland
Music must be made popular, not by debasing the art, but by elevating the people.

Confucius (551-478 BC)
When music and courtesy are better understood and appreciated, there will be no war.

Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.

Aaron Copland (1900-90)
A melody is not merely something you can hum.

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.'

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
[Of discords] Le régal de l'ouïe.
A feast for the ear.

Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
Playing 'Bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

My biggest kick in music – playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?

Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)
Modern church music is so constructed that the congregation cannot hear one distinct word.

Gabriel Faure, scolding music student, Ralph Vaughan Williams, for working in a hotel room with no piano:
Without the piano one cannot invent new harmonies.

Nicholas Harnoncourt
I see man as someone into whose hands God has placed a hammer and a violin. Such a person lives a very happy life, he sees that with the hammer he can satisfy his material needs, and he feels that the violin opens up a world beyond language, beyond logic, a world that he cannot reach with his hammer. It is the violin that makes him human. But there is a devil called materialism that hates the violin; man easily allows himself to be led astray: the hammer creates comfort, luxury, order for him. He forgets how to play and how to perform on the violin: he forgets the divine gift of art.

Heraclitus (c. 540-480 BC)
The fairest harmony springs from discord.

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
Tonality is a natural force, like gravity ... Music, as long as it exists, will always take its departure from the major triad and return to it. The musician cannot escape it any more than the painter his primary colours or the architect his three dimensions.

The reactions music evokes are not feelings, but they are the images, memories of feelings.

Lili Kraus (1905- )
Objectivity in music is rubbish ... Have you ever had an objective love affair? And what is music but love?

Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

We have decided to follow the example of the prophets and the fathers of the church and write German hymns for the German people.

I am not of the opinion that all the arts shall be crushed to earth and perish through the Gospel, as some bigoted persons pretend, but would willingly see them all, and especially music, servants of Him who gave and created them.

Nothing on earth is so well suited to make the sad merry, the merry sad, to give courage to the despairing, to make the proud humble, to lessen envy and hate, as music.

Paul McCartney (1942- )
There are two things John and I always do when we're going to sit down and write a song. First of all we sit down. Then we think about writing a song.

Henry Miller (1891-1980)
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

James Morrison [on his song Ease On In]
It’s kind of like a funky sort of Afro-Cuban swinging jazz-rock sort of Classical punk waltz reggae calypso sort of Scottish feel.
James and his family lived across the road from my Uncle Dave and Aunty Win. Aunty Win says they were very nice but very quiet, and only occasionally would you hear music coming from the house

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91)
I like an aria to fit a singer as perfectly as a well-tailored suit of clothes. (from a letter written in 1778)

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Without music, life would be a mistake.

Christopher North (1785-1854)
Music is the universal language of mankind.

Paderewski
Piano playing is more difficult than statesmanship. It is harder to awake emotions in ivory keys than it is in human beings.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but for the music there.

Elvis Presley
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
I have never doubted the importance of melody. I like melody very much, and I consider it the most important element in music, and I labour many years on the improvement of its quality in my compositions.

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.

Ned Rorem (1923- )
The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of.

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
There is nothing more difficult than talking about music.

Artur Schnabel
Music is ...but the pauses between the notes... that is where the art resides.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Nothing soothes me more after a long and maddening course of pianoforte recitals than to sit and have my teeth drilled.

Robert Schumann
The study of the history of music and the hearing of masterworks of different epochs will quickly cure you of vanity and self-adoration.

Andrés Segovia
I've had only three wives and three guitars in my life, though I've flirted with others.

Frank Sinatra
It was my idea to make my voice work in the same way as a trombone or violin - not sounding like them, but 'playing' the voice like those instruments.

Cristopher Smart (1722-71)
Glorious the song, when God's the theme.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
The Church knew what the Psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise Him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.

I was born out of due time in the sense that by temperament and talent I should have been more suited for the life of a small Bach, living in anonymity and composing regularly for an established service and for God.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I've felt it.

Virgil Thomson (1896-1989)
Verbal communication about music is impossible except among musicians.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
[On editing The English Hymnal]
Two years of close association with some of the best (as well as some of the worst) tunes in the world was a better musical education than any amount of sonatas and fugues.

Sid Vicious
You just pick a chord, go twang, and you've got music!

Peter Warlock
". . . music is neither old nor modern: it is either good or bad music, and the date at which it was written has no significance whatever. Dates and periods are of interest only to the student of musical history. . . . All old music was modern once, and much more of the music of yesterday already sounds more old-fashioned than works which were written three centuries ago. All good music, whatever its date, is ageless -- as alive and significant today as it was when it was written . . ." The Sackbut, 1926

Oscar Wilde
Of course music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen,
and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

John Williams [conductor]
Every time Brahms went to hear one of his symphonies played, he would go in the audience and listen to the symphony, and the next day he would go to the Bibliotheque in Vienna, get the original score out and make changes—he never could leave it alone. Some sage said that a work of art is never finished, it's only abandoned.

Frank Zappa
Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

Some people crave baseball -- I find this unfathomable --
but I can easily understand why a person could get excited about playing a bassoon.

I write the music I like. If other people like it, fine, they can go buy the albums. And if they don't like it, there's always Michael Jackson for them to listen to.

It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think I'm wrong. The number of people who thought Hitler was right did not make him right... Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?

Rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read.

Andrei A. Zhdanov (1896-19848)
The people do not need music which they cannot understand.

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