Best Musical Proverbs
1396 Musical quotes by 1030 unique authors
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Theirs [the Beatles] is a happy, cocky, belligerently resourceless brand of harmonic primitivism... In the Liverpudlian repertoire, the indulged amateurishness of the musical material, though…
— Glenn Gould
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Teaching music to children is the most important thing in life, next to parenting, that a person can do.
— Unknown Author
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And if there come the singers, and the dancers and the flute players - buy of their gifts also. For they too are gatherers of…
— Khalil Gibran
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Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
— Samuel Johnson
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You can play Bach on the piano, a symphony orchestra or a quartet of saxophones, but let's stop this silly, childish business of knit your…
— Unknown Author
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If I had the power, I would insist on all oratorios being sung in the costume of the period, with the possible exception of The…
— Ernest Newman
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I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach into outer space on the Voyager spacecraft. But that would be boasting.
— Lewis Thomas
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If you remove tone from music, you have something, but what? I find it difficult to call it music.
— Tamas Vasary
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Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all.
— Unknown Author
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Music has its own internal logic. It is like the logic of a dream, clear in its own terms but not necessarily in everyday terms.…
— Tamas Vasary
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Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
— Aaron Copland
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Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.
— Ned Rorem
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Text first, rhythm second, melody third.
— Claudio Monteverdi
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A musician cannot move others unless he, too, is moved.
— Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
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What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.
— Gustav Mahler
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Composers and musicians have always starved and, as this is a sentimental country, we think the tradition should be continued.
— Thomas Beecham
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The music is in the air. Take as much as you want.
— Edward Elgar
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Musicians talk of nothing but money and jobs. Give me businessmen every time. They really are interested in music and art
— Jean Sibelius
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If they think they are doing something new, they ought to do what I do every day - spend at least two hours every day…
— Coleman Hawkins
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They tell me Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
— Edgar Wilson Nye
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Music ministers to human welfare more than any other art.
— Herbert Spencer
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Don't play the notes. Play the meaning of the notes.
— Pablo Casals
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Music for a long time has been telling what the world is like. What music has to say now, in a manner that has both…
— Eli Siegel
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There is not one thing that music does which does not say something about how a person should organize himself, too.
— Eli Siegel
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We must ask why apparently general musical abilities should be restricted to a chosen few in societies supposed to be culturally more advanced. Does cultural…
— John Blacking
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1,030 authors contributed a total of 1,396 Musical Quotes, led by these top contributors: