Home / Topics / Music Quotes

Music Quotes

Browse 6488 quotes about Music.

Music Quotes

“When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.”

Thinking Speak Music Listening Composer Listeners Gifted

Author:Aaron Copland

“I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like, I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers.”

My Own Music Cases Faults Convinced Composer Arrogant Listeners Impatient Verdi

Book:On Music

Source: On Music

“Music is not merely a study, it is an entertainment; wherever there is music there is a throng of listeners.”

Music Study Music Is Entertainment Listeners

Author:William C. Bryant

“Mozart eliminates the idea of haste from life. His airs could not lag as they make their journey through the listener's attention; they are not the right shape for loitering. But it is as true that they never rush, they are never headlong or helter-skelter, they splash no mud, they raise no dust.”

Ideas Attention Music Air Journey Shapes Raises Dust Listeners Mud Haste Lag

Book:Black lamb and grey falcon: a journey through Yugoslavia

Source: Black lamb and grey falcon: a journey through Yugoslavia

“Music must never offend the ear, but must please the listener, or, in other words, must never cease to be music.”

Music Please Ears Cease Listeners Famous Musician

Book:The Letters of Mozart and His Family

Source: The Letters of Mozart and His Family

“A flutist who is moved to tears by his own performance will soon make the listeners laugh because of the sounds that he produces.”

Art Artist Sound Music Laughing Produce Tears Musician Performances Moved Listeners Torn

Author:Franz Grillparzer

“Songs are as sad as the listener.”

Song Music Sadness Perspective Perception Listeners

Book:Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel

“Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad.”

Ifs Knows Feels Firsts Sometimes Wish Walks Music Heard First Time Jazz Musical Listeners Jazz Music

Author:John Coltrane

“Listening to music engages the previously acquired personal knowledge of the listener.”

Music Listening Listeners Listening To Music Personal Knowledge

Author:Marvin Minsky

“Jazz translates the moment into a sense of inspiration for not only the musicians but for the listeners.”

Moments Inspiration Music Musician Jazz Translate Listeners

Author:Herbie Hancock

“If we compel the composer to write in terms of what the listener is able to hear, we flirt with the danger of freezing the evolution of musical language, whose progressive development comes about through transgressions of a given era's perceptual habits."”

Ifs Writing Able Language Given Term Music Danger Development Evolution Habit Musical Eras Progressive Composer Listeners Flirting Transgression Freezing

Book:Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music

Source: Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music

“My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.”

Firsts Kind Situation Music Jazz Musical Listeners

Author:Pat Metheny