“The future of music may not lie entirely in music itself, but rather in the way it encourages and extends, rather than limits the aspirations and ideals of the people, in the way it makes itself a part with the finer things that humanity does and dreams of.” PeopleWayMayDoeDreamLyingHumanityLimitsIdealsAspirationFiner Things Author:Charles Ives
“But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.” MenMayLanguageCuriousExtravagantTranscendental Book:Piano sonata no. 2: Source: Piano sonata no. 2:
“It is conceivable that what is unified form to the author or composer may of necessity be formless to his audience.” MayFormAudienceComposerUnified Book:Essays Before a Sonata Source: Essays Before a Sonata
“Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's. The meaning of 'God' may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls in the world” IfsWorldMaySoulMatterTermExpressionBillionsInterpretation Book:Essays Before a Sonata Source: Essays Before a Sonata
“An apparent confusion, if lived with long enough, may become orderly . . . A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day's unity” IfsMayLongEnoughMomentsSeemsConsciousnessUnityConfusionNoonOrderlyDaybreak Book:Piano sonata no. 2: Source: Piano sonata no. 2:
“In some century to come, when the school children will whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones--when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic is now--perhaps then these borderland experiences may be both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense” MenMayChildrenSchoolLanguageCenturyScalesCuriousToneTunesQuartersObsoleteExtravagantTranscendental Book:Essays Before a Sonata Source: Essays Before a Sonata
“If idioms are more to be born than to be selected, then the things of life and human nature that a man has grown up with--(not that one man's experience is better than another's, but that it is 'his.')--may give him something better in his substance and manner than an over-long period of superimposed idiomatic education which quite likely doesn't fit his constitution. My father used to say, 'If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven'” IfsKnowsMenGivingHumansMayLongDoeMightUsedFatherHeavenBornHuman NaturePoetPeriodsFitConstitutionHorseSticksSubstanceOne ManSomething BetterSelectedIdiom Author:Charles Ives
“If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven.” IfsKnowsMayDoeMightPoetryHeavenPoetHorseSticks Author:Charles Ives
