Music quotes

Addison Joseph 1672-1719

‘A Song for St Cecilia's Day'

Music, the greatest good that mortals know
And all of heaven we have below.

Anonymous

(Decca Recording Company rejecting The Beatles)

We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.

Armstrong Louis 1901-1971

All music is folk music, I ain't never heard no horse sing a song.

Arnold Matthew 1822-1888

‘Parting'

Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn
Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?

Beecham Sir Thomas 1879-1961

The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.

Beecham Sir Thomas 1879-1961

Music first and last should sound well, should allure and enchant the ear. Never mind the inner significance.

Berlin Irving 1888-1989

Carefree ‘Change Partners'
Must you dance ev'ry dance
With the same fortunate man?
You have danced with him since the music began.
Won't you change partners and dance with me?

Brown Arthur

Music is only sound expressing certain patterns, so to what extent is that sound architecture and to what extent theatre?

Browning Robert 1812-1889

Who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once.

Coleridge Samuel Taylor 1772-1834

‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'

No voice; but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.

Confucius 551-479 BC

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

Congreve William 1670-1729

‘Hymn to Harmony'

Music alone with sudden charms can bind
The wand'ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.

Congreve William 1670-1729

The Mourning Bride

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.

Copland Aaron 1900-1990

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

Coward Noёl 1899-1973

Private Lives

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Crosby Bing 1904-1977

I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse.

Dryden John 1631-1700

A Song for St Cecilia's Day

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

Dryden John 1631-1700

A Song for St Cecilia's Day

The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky.

Elgar Sir Edward 1857-1934

There is music in the air.

Glinka Mikhail 1804-1857

A nation creates music - the composer only arranges it.

Ho Tao

Good architecture is like a piece of beautifully composed music crystallized in space that elevates our spirits beyond the limitation of time.

Howe Edgar Watson

When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.

Huxley Aldous 1894-1963

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Johnson Samuel 1709-1784

Music ... the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Keats John 1795-1921

‘The Eve of St Agnes'

The music, yearning like a God in pain.

Lillo George 1693-1739

The Fatal Curiosity

There's sure no passion in the human soul,
But finds its food in music.

Miller Henry 1891-1980

Tropic of Cancer

Even before the music begins there is that bored look on people's faces. A polite form of self-imposed torture, the concert.

Milton John 1608-1674

‘Arcades'

Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.

Moore Thomas 1779-1852

‘The harp that once through Tara's halls'
The harp that once through Tara's halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls
As if that soul were fled.
So sleeps the pride of former days,
So glory's thrill is o'er;
And hearts, that once beat high for praise,
Now feel that pulse no more.

Nabokov Vladimir 1899-1977

No one can any longer write in the fat style of Strauss. That was killed by Stravinsky. He stripped the body of much of its clothes. Music is the craft of building structures with sound and that is what Stravinsky represents.

Nietzsche Friedrich 1844-1900

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Parker Charlie 1920-1955

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it it won't come out of your horn.

Pater Walter 1839-1894

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.

Patmore Coventry 1823-1896

The Victories of Love

He that but once too nearly hears
The music of forfended spheres
Is thenceforth lonely, and for all
His days as one who treads the Wall
Of China, and, on this hand, sees
Cities and their civilities
And, on the other, lions.

Pepys Samuel 1633-1703

Diary

Music and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.

Piazzolla Aslor

Good music is everything that swings. Mozart also swings.

Pope Alexander 1688-1744

An Essay on Criticism

As some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.

Pope Alexander 1688-1744

Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
Make the soul dance upon a jig of heaven.

Powell Anthony
(after the painting by Nicolas Poussin)

A dance to the music of time.

Rossini Gioacchino 1792-1868

Give me a laundry-list and I'll set it to music.

Schelling Friedrich von 1775-1854

Philosophie der Kunst

Architecture in general is frozen music.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

Antony and Cleopatra

Give me some music - music, moody food
Of us that trade in love.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

The Merchant of Venice

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

The Merchant of Venice

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

The Merchant of Venice

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

Richard II

How sour sweet music is,
When time is broke, and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

Twelfth Night

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Stravinsky Igor 1882-1971

Music is given to us specifically to make order of things, to move from an anarchic, individualistic state to a regulated, perfectly concious
one, which alone insures vitality and durability.

Synge John Millington 1871-1909

The Aran Islands

‘A translation is no translation,' he said, ‘unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.'

Tennyson Alfred Lord 1809-1892

Idylls of the King ‘Merlin and Vivien'

It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.

Thoreau Henry David 1817-1862

Walden ‘Conclusion'

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Tolkien J.R.R. 1892-1973