| Andersen, Hans Christian | Where words fail, music speaks. |
| Armstrong, Louis | If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know. |
| Armstrong, Louis | Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them. |
| Auerbach, Berthold | Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. |
| Bach, Johann Sebastian | I have always kept one end in view, namely to conduct a well-regulated church music to the honor of God. |
| Bach, Johann Sebastian | The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul. |
| Barnett, Courtney | When it’s really fun to play it over and over then you know it’s pretty well finished. Maybe not completely, but it’s pretty well there. |
| Barrow, John | Mozart wrote musical pieces with a score that could be inverted or played back to front and still form a pleasing musical piece. |
| Batiste, Jon | You know what’s deep is that God gave us 12 notes. It’s the same 12 notes Duke Ellington had, Bach had, Nina Simone…I’m just thankful to God for those 12 notes. |
| Beecham, Thomas | Brass bands are all very well in their place—outdoors and several miles away. |
| Beecham, Thomas | There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn’t give a damn what goes on in between. |
| Beethoven, Ludwig van | Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets. |
| Beethoven, Ludwig van | Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents. |
| Beethoven, Ludwig van | Music is freedom above all. |
| Beethoven, Ludwig van | Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. |
| Beethoven, Ludwig Van | Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman. |
| Bernstein, Leonard | To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time. |
| Berry, Chuck | I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn’t paint. |
| Beyer, Rick | Buddy Bolden couldn’t read music, so for him improvisation was everything. His style apparently involved “ragging” on the melodies, playing two or three notes for every one in the original tune. |
| Bloch, Ernest | Debussy is like a painter who looks at his canvas to see what more he can take out; Strauss is like a painter who has covered very inch and then takes the paint he has left and throws it at the canvas. |
| Bowen, Catherine Drinker | Chamber music- a conversation between friends. |
| Britten, Edward Benjamin | The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping. |
| Buckley, Jr., William F. | Life can’t be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years. |
| Cage, John | Everything you do is music and everywhere is the best seat. |
| Carlyle, Thomas | Music is well said to be the speech of angels. |
| Casals, Pablo | The art of the melody can never be put down on paper. |
| Casals, Pablo | The greatest respect an artist can pay to music is to give it life. |
| Cerf, Bennett | The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost. |
| Charles, Ray | Music to me is like breathing. I don’t get tired of breathing, I don’t get tired of music. |
| Coleman, Ornette | Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time. |
| Combarieu, Jules | Music is the art of thinking with sounds. |
| Confucius | Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. |
| Daniels, Charlie | I learned early on that I wanted to be an entertainer. Musicians come and go, but if you’re able to entertain along with the music, there will always be a place for you. If you can make someone smile, it adds a lot to the show. It would be many years before I qualified as a real entertainer, but I was working on it. |
| Daniels, Charlie | Walk onstage with a positive attitude. Your troubles are your own and are not included in the ticket price. |
| Davis, Miles | Do not fear mistakes. There are none. |
| Davis, Miles | Do you ever feel like you want to play as if you don’t know how to play? |
| Davis, Miles | Do you ever get tired of playing music that sounds like music? |
| Davis, Miles | I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later. |
| Davis, Miles | Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself. |
| Davis, Miles | The hardest thing about music is trying to sound like yourself. |
| Debussy, Claude | Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light. |
| Debussy, Claude | Music is the space between the notes. |
| Debussy, Claude | Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art. |
| Diamond, Neil | I’ve forgiven myself for not being Beethoven. |
| Edwards, Jonathan | The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other is by music. |
| Einstein, Albert | If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music…I get most joy in life out of music. |
| Ellington, Duke | I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. |
| Ellington, Duke | If it sounds good, it IS good. |
| Ellington, Duke | Simplicity is a most complex form. The more involved you become, the more important & beautiful you find simplicity is. |
| Emerson, Ralph Waldo | Music causes us to think eloquently. |
| Gardner, Ed | Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of bleeding, he sings. |
| Gillespie, Dizzy | It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play. |
| Ginsberg, Louis | God created the universe in order to hear music, and everything has a song of praise for God. |
| Grohl, Dave | I’m getting all wound up and nervous over playing at the White House and it is only going to last five minutes and it’s over. So I thought, just enjoy the moment! |
| Gunderson, Denny | If you are attracted to the creative arts, it is probably because God has placed that calling upon you. Pursue, cultivate, and incessantly practice your chosen form. |
| Hall, Jim | Notes are an intelligent way of moving from one silence to another. |
| Handel, George Frideric | I should be sorry if I only entertained them. I wished to make them better. |
| Harrison, George | If we’d known we were going to be the Beatles, we’d have tried harder. |
| Hart, Mickey | An instrument becomes an extension of the player’s own body. |
| Haydn, Franz Joseph | It is the melody which is the charm of music, and it is that which is most difficult to produce. The invention of a fine melody is a work of genius. |
| Helm, Levon | If you pour some music on whatever’s wrong, it’ll sure help out. |
| Herbert, Mark | There is no such thing as a secret trumpet player. |
| Herseth, Bud | When you make a mistake, be proud of it. Put your horn down and stare at the conductor. Unless his ear is great, he won’t know. If he does, fine! |
| Holiday, Billie | Everyone’s got to be different. You can’t copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. And without feeling, whatever you do amounts to nothing. |
| Holiday, Billie | People don’t understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it. |
| Holmes, Oliver Wendell | Alas for those that never sing,But die with all their music in them. |
| Holmes, Oliver Wendell | Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body. |
| Horowitz, Vladimir | I must tell you I take terrible risks. Because my playing is very clear, when I make a mistake you hear it. If you want me to play only the notes without any specific color dynamics, I will never make one mistake. Never be afraid to dare. And never imitate. Play without asking advice. |
| Horowitz, Vladimir | When a piece gets difficult, make faces. |
| Hubbard, Kin | Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune. |
| Hugo, Victor | Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent. |
| Huxley, Aldous | After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. |
| Irish proverb | A man becomes the song he sings. |
| Jackson, Mahalia | God gave me this talent, and the least I can do is give it back to Him. |
| Jarrett, Keith | If everything is perfect, if the piano is in tune, if everyone is sitting quiet and expectant and all the audience are Keith Jarrett fans, then I don’t feel the need to play. It’s the worst possible situation. |
| Jellinek | The inner history of a people is contained in its songs. |
| Jewish proverb | Love thy neighbor, even when he plays the trombone. |
| Joel, Billy | I think music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we’re all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from, everyone loves music. |
| Jones, Jo | I can tell you much more about what a man is really thinking by listening to him play than by hearing him talk. You can’t hide anything in that horn. |
| Landowska, Wanda | I never practice, I always play. |
| Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth | Music is the universal language of mankind. |
| Luther, Martin | Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us. |
| Luther, Martin | The Devil should not be allowed to keep all the best tunes for himself. |
| Madden, Joel | Music is supposed to be an escape. It’s supposed to be somewhere you go, where you can be yourself, or be whatever you want to be. |
| Marsalis, Wynton | Music comes to you at strange times but you have to be ready to catch it, because if you don’t she may be gone for good. |
| McCartney, Paul | Somebody said to me, “But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.” That’s a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, “Now, let’s write a swimming pool.” |
| Mellencamp, John | They started laughing again. I said, “OK, now laugh at this.” I played them “Small Town,” and they went dead quiet. When you play what you’ve done for a family member and you get that kind of reaction, you know you have something. |
| Menuhim, Yehudi | Improvisation is not the expression of accident but rather of the accumulated yearnings, dreams, and wisdom of our very soul. |
| Menuhim, Yehudi | Music is given us with our existence. Above other arts it can be possessed without knowledge. |
| Mingus, Charles | Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. |
| Mitchell, Ollie | Music is the Universal Language, as well as an art, a craft, and, if you will, a science with math, pitch, and emotion involved. It has the effect of changing moods quicker than liquor or drugs. |
| Montaigne, Michel de | There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent. |
| Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus | People make a mistake who think that my art has come easily to me. Nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not studied over and over. |
| Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus | Silence is very important. The silence between the notes are as important as the notes themselves. |
| Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus | When I am completely myself, entirely alone, or doing the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. When and how these come I know not, nor can I force them. |
| Muldaur, Maria | Before people went to shrinks, the blues was great therapy. |
| Nicholaus, Bret | Try to find someone who’s a true fan of both Elvis Presley and Bach. There’s a lesson to be learned from this person. |
| Norworth, Jack | I wrote more than three thousand songs, seven of them good. |
| Paderewski, Ignacy | If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it. |
| Paderewski, Ignacy | The only way to become master of any skill is first to become its slave. And that takes, practice, practice, practice. |
| Parker, Charlie | Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you. |
| Parker, Charlie | First you learn the instrument, then you learn the music, and then you forget all that stuff and just play. |
| Parker, Charlie | If you don’t live it, it wont’ come out of your horn. |
| Parker, Charlie | You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail. |
| Paul, Les | The older I get the fewer notes I need. |
| Perlman, Itzhak | The violin is a replica of the soul. |
| Perlman, Toby | Music gives us permission to dream. |
| Plato | I would teach the children physics, philosophy, and music; and of these, music is the most important, for in the arts lies the understanding of all humanities. |
| Plato | Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything. |
| Plato | Music training is more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul. |
| Plutarch | Music, to create harmony, must investigate discord. |
| Powers, Thomas | The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece with a difficult violin passage. After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, “I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.” |
| Rabaud, Henri | Musical compositions, it should be remembered, do not inhabit certain countries, certain museums, like paintings and statues. The Mozart Quintet is not shut up in Salzburg: I have it in my pocket. |
| Rainey, Ma | Let your soul do the singin’. |
| Rasey, Uan | Play it three times in a row, back to back to back. If you can do that, you’ll be able to play it anywhere, anytime. He also stated that you had to get the correct notes and pitch, but his main emphasis with students was ALWAYS beauty of sound. “Make it sing.” |
| Richter, Jean Paul | Music is the poetry of the air. |
| Rivera, Mark | Miles Davis said that if you play one note right, everything else just makes sense. He was referring to tone, the quality of the sound: its pitch, its shape. What were those initial tones for me? When did music start making sense? |
| Rubinstein, Arthur | I cannot tell you how much I love to play for people. Would you believe it— sometimes when I sit down to practice and there is no one else in the room, I have to stifle an impulse to ring for the elevator man and offer him money to come in and hear me. |
| Sandoval, Arturo | Why walk when you can fly? |
| Sawyer, Keith | The real secret to exceptional creativity is practice. |
| Schnabel, Arthur | The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes—ah, that is where the art resides! |
| Schubert, Franz | My compositions spring from my sorrows. Those that give the world the greatest delight were born of my deepest griefs. |
| Schumann, Robert | Music is to me the perfect expression of the soul. |
| Schweitzer, Albert | There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. |
| Sebök, Gyorgy | The music is not the notes. It is between the notes. |
| Seeger, Pete | The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be. |
| Severinsen, Doc | I made 98% of my money under high C. |
| Sills, Beverly | Art is the signature of civilizations. |
| Stokowski, Leopold | A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music and you provide the silence. |
| Stokowski, Leopold | It is not necessary to understand music; it is only necessary that one enjoy it. |
| Stravinsky, Igor | I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it. |
| Stravinsky, Igor | I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the varieties of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust. |
| Stravinsky, Igor | 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. |
| Stravinsky, Igor | My music is best understood by children and animals. |
| Stravinsky, Igor | Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end. |
| Swan, Jane | How is it that music can, without words, evoke our laughter, our fears, our highest aspirations? |
| Szell, George | In music one must think with the heart and feel with the brain. |
| Terry, Clark | Desire to excel. You’ve got to want to play better than everybody. |
| Terry, Clark | Keep on keepin’ on. |
| Terry, Clark | Many players don’t study themselves enough. They don’t know what their shortcomings are. Some of them can’t if they try because they don’t practice. |
| Terry, Clark | When I started out, learning a new song was almost like acquiring a new toy. That’s when I really started loving what I was doing. |
| Tetzlaff, Christian | Music is humans’ most advanced achievement. Trying to turn lead into gold is nothing compared to taking something mechanical like an instrument—a string and a bow—and using it to evoke a human soul. |
| Tilson, Michael Thomas | A wise friend of my father’s had said to me: “You should not go into music unless it is a compulsion. In the end, all you really have as a center is the music itself. Make sure that you have to be with it every day. If that’s true, the you should become a musician.” |
| Tolstoy, Leo | Music is the shorthand of emotion. |
| Twain, Mark | Wagner’s music is better than it sounds. |
| Unknown | Amateurs work until they get it right. Professionals work until they can’t get it wrong. |
| Unknown | Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart all worked regular shifts each day, just like an accountant settles in at the computer. They did not sit down to work because they were inspired, but became inspired because they sat down to work. |
| Unknown | Irving Berlin couldn’t read or write music and could only play the piano in F sharp. |
| Unknown | The story is told of an eccentric cello player who sawed away on one note hour after hour and day after day. Someone asked him why he didn’t play other notes, as other players did. He answered: “They are hunting it; I have found it.” |
| Unknown | To be creative, you have to generate boatloads of ideas. To be creative successfully, you have to let most of them sink, because the real genius lies in picking good ideas. Today’s symphony orchestras play only about 35 percent of Johann Sebastian Bach’s, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s, or Ludwig van Beethoven’s compositions—which means these composers have a pretty low success rate! The rest of us, realistically, can’t hope to do any better. |
| Unknown | When Beethoven conducted the premiere of his Ninth Symphony in Vienna, he was completely deaf. After it ended, one of the soloists had to turn him around so he could see the audience applauding. |
| Unknown | When he was 90, Pablo Casals, the renowned cellist, was asked, “Why do you still practice so many hours a day?” Countered he, “Because I think I am improving!” |
| Unknown | Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. |
| Verdi, Giuseppe | It is better to invent reality than to copy it. |
| White, Jack | I always have my own rules, and I can bend them if I want. |
| Zappa, Frank | Most rock journalism is people who cannot write interviewing people who cannot talk for people who cannot read. |
| Zohar, Tikkune | There are palaces that open only to music. |
Christian Quotations 