World Musical Quote's

Classical Musical quote’s:-

have been very entertaining for previous and hopefully future generations. Ladies with an interest in music, would have been quoted these by gentlemen to impress  them in their Parlour rooms, carriages, and in the Concert Halls.  We hope some of these musical gems make you smile as well!

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Our Latest Quotes are           I got a ragtime dog and a ragtime cat  A ragtime piano in my ragtime flat,I’m wearing ragtime clothes from hat to shoes. I read a paper called the ragtime news . I got ragtime habits and I talk that way. I sleep in ragtime and rag all day. Got ragtime  troubles with my ragtime wife I’m certainly leading a ragtime life!.( Jefferson and Roberts. Rag, 1899)

 

Which of the two powers, love or music, is able to lift man to the sublimest heights ?  It is a great question, but it seems to me that one might answer it thus; love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love. Why separate the one from the other?  They are the two wings of the soul. (Hector Berlioz 1803-69 )

 

 

It is clear that the first specification for a Composer, is to be dead!

By Henri Gouthier-Villurs (1851-1931. writer and music critic).

Music is well said to be the speech of Angels.

By Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) writer, historian).

This painting is a fragment from Virgin and child with four Angels. An oil on wood by Gerard David working from 1484-1523.

Lutes, flutes and Lyres enervate the mind.

By Ovid.

Nothing is more beautiful than a guitar, except possibly, TWO!

By Frederic Chopin (1810-1849. composer )

Good music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and quits the memory with difficulty. From: (Sir Thomas Beecham BBC Broadcast 17th November 1953)

Look out! Be on your guard because of all the arts, music moves all around you.  By: (Jean Cocteau 1889-1963).

Music is an ocean, but the repertory…..is hardly even a lake, it is a pond. By: (Aldous Huxley 1894-1963).

Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated that such messages can be understood by the many, but sent out only by the few, and that alone among all the languages unite the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable- these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods, and make music itself the supreme mystery of human knowledge.  By: (Claude Levi-Strauss 1908-2009) Anthropologist.

Music is life,and like it Inextinguishable. By: (Carl Nielsen 1865-1931) Motto of Symphony No 4.

If I were to begin life again I would devote it to music.It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture on earth. By: (Sydney Smith 1771-1845- Letter to the Countess of Carlisle.1844) English writer and cleric)

The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.  By: (Sir Thomas Beecham 1879-1961.)

Music ….is made particulary and principally to charm the spirit and the ear, and to enable us to pass our lives with a little sweetness amidst all the bitterness that we encounter here.  By: (Marin Mersenne 1588-1648) French philosopher,mathematcian and music theorist).

Of all the elements united in the performance of music, rhythm is the most natural to us, as it is equally natural to all animals.  By: (Jean-Phillipe Rameau 1683-1764,Composer)

Melody alone never grows old.  By: Vincent d’Indy (1851-1931)

Three things belong to melody, first of all melody, then again melody, then finally, for the third time, melody.  By: (Salomon Jadassohn (1831-1902) composer.

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….. If sometimes happens that the composer works over his melody and corrects it for so long, without noticing it, he makes it extremely complicated and loses its simplicity . In the process of  work, I fell into this trap.  By:  Serge Prokofiev ( 1891-1953).

 

Harmony alone can stir the emotions. It is the one source from which melody directly emanates, and draws its power. By: (Jean-Phillipe Rameau (1683-1764).

If there is nothing new to be found in melody then we must seek novelty in harmony.  By:(George Philipp Telemann (1681-1767).

Atonality is against nature. There is a centre to everything that exists.The planets have the sun, the moon, the earth…….All music with a centre is tonal. Music without a centre is fine for a moment or two, but it soon sounds all the same. By: (Alan Hovhaness 1911-2009) composer.

This print is from La Mode Illustree.  Perhaps she is looking for a musical quote! The gowns are examples of magnificent crinolin’s.  Toiletes de Mme.  Breant-Castel,  Paris.   Artist:  Anais Tondouze.

 

I am convinced that provided the ear be at length made amends,there are few dissonances too strong for it. By: (Charles Burney (1726-1814).English music historian.

Dissonance…….is the Dolce Piccante of music and operates on the ear as a poignant sauce on the palate: it ia a zest without which the auditory sense would be as much cloyed as the appetite, if it had nothing to feed on but sweets. By: (Charles Burney 1726-1814).

A feast for the ear.  By: (Claude Debussy 1862-1918).

Medicine, to produce health, must know disease:music to produce harmony, must know discord.  By: (Plutarch 46-120 Greek Historian & Biographer).

We probably derive all our basic rhymes and themes from nature, which offers them to us, pregnant with meaning in every animal noise.  By: (Gustav Mahler 1860-1911. Composer).

Among the artistic hierarchy birds are probably the greatest musicians to inhabit our planet.  By: (Olivier Messiaen 1908-1992) Composer.

Perhaps in our joy of musical rhythm there is expressed something of the primal joy of creation…The domain of rhythm extends from the spiritual to the carnal.  By: ( Bruno Walter (1876-1962 conductor).

Music exalts each joy allays each grief expels diseases, softens every pain, subdues the rage of passion and the plague.  By: (John Armstrong M.D. 1709-1779).

Who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the Infinite and lets us for the moment gaze into that.  By: (Thomas Carlyle 1791-1881).

Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for.  By: ( Nadia Boulanger 1887-1979, teacher and composer).

 

 

Another Musical Angel.

When music and courtesy are better understood and appreciated, there will be no war. By: ( Confucious, 551-478 B.C.)

Music is a safe kind of high. By: Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970).

Music does not lie to the feelings. By: (Franz Liszt 1811-1886).

Music is one of the greatest gifts that God has given us; it is divine and therefore Satan is its enemy; For with its aid many dire temptations are overcome , the devil does not stay where music is. (Martin Luther 1483-1546  German monk, priest, and professor of theology).

When I hear music , I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest. (Henry David Thoreau  1817-1862). American author, poet, philosopher).

To write music is to raise a ladder without a wall to lean it against. There is no scaffolding: the building under construction is held in balance only by the miracle of a kind of internal logic, an innate sense of proportion. Arthur Honegger.  ( 1892-1955) Composer.

I frequently compare a symphony or a sonata with a novel in which the themes are the characters.After we have made their acquaintance,we follow their evolution, the unfolding of their psychology. Their individual features linger with us as if present. Some of these characters arouse feelings of sympathy,others repel us. They are set off against one another or they join hands; they make love; they marry or they fight. Arthur Honegger. (1892-1955) composer.

 

Words created divergencies between beings, because their precise meanings put an opinion around the idea. Music only retains the highest and purest substance of the idea, since it has the privilege of expressing all,whilst excluding nothing. Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979).