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Sonatas Quotes

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Sonatas Quotes

“What I so like about Poussin and Cezanne is their sense of organization. Ilike the way in which they develop space and shape in architecturalcontinuity - the rhythm across their paintings. When I paint a landscape, Iget the greatest pleasure out of composing it. As I paint, I try to work outa visual sonata form or a fugue, with realistic images.”

WayTryingFormSpacePleasurePaintingShapesOrganizationPaintWork OutRhythmLandscapeVisualsRealisticComposingGreatest PleasuresFugueSonatasCezanne
Author:Ian Hornak
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“The brain is only three pounds of blood, dream, and electricity, and yet from that mortal stew come Beethoven's sonatas. Dizzie Gillespie's jazz. Audrey Hepburn's wish to spend the last month of her life in Somalia, saving children.”

ChildrenDreamLastsThreeWishBrainBloodMonthsJazzSavingMortalsPoundsElectricityStewHepburnAudreySomaliaSonatas
Book:A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses
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“What are the characters that I discern most clearly in the so-called Anglo-Saxon type of man? I may answer at once that two stickout above all others. One is his curious and apparently incurable incompetence--his congenital inability to do any difficult thing easily and well, whether it be isolating a bacillus or writing a sonata. The other is his astounding susceptibility to fears and alarms--in short, his hereditary cowardice.... There is no record in history of any Anglo-Saxon nation entering upon any great war without allies.”

MenWritingWellsMayTwoWarCharacterNationsDifficultAnswersRecordsTypeCuriousAlliesCowardiceEnteringInabilityAlarmsDifficult ThingsIncompetenceGreat WarHereditaryAnglo SaxonSusceptibilitySonatas
Book:Mencken Chrestomathy
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“I consider the first 20 performances just learning the piece. Think about it this way: If you think about a pianist who plays a Schubert sonata through his whole lifetime - if you listen to Rubenstein or Horowitz playing their repertoire later in their life, you understand the richness with which they play that music, and how differently they must have played it when they were younger.”

IfsThinkingWayFirstsPlayWholePiecesPerformancesLifetimeWhole LifeRichnessPianistSonatasSchubert
Author:Philip Glass
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“Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand, to have powers which I cannot have. Music seems to me to act like yawning or laughter; I have no desire to sleep, but I yawn when I see others yawn; with no reason to laugh, I laugh when I hear others laugh. And music transports me immediately into the condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. ~The Kreutzer Sonata”

FeelsRealSoulStatesReasonSeemsDesireFoundMy OwnSleepForgetSituationLaughingInfluenceConditionsLaughterNo ReasonTransportYawningSonatas
Book:LEO TOLSTOY – The Ultimate Short Stories Collection: 120+ Titles in One Volume (World Classics Series): The Kreutzer Sonata, The Forged Coupon, Hadji Murad, Alyosha the Pot, Master and Man, Father Sergius, Diary of a Lunatic, The Cossacks, My Dream, The Young Tsar, Fables and Stories for Children...
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“Many Introverts are also "highly sensitive," which sounds poetic, but is actually a technical term in psychology. If you are a sensitive sort, then you're more apt than the average person to feel pleasantly overwhelmed by Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" or a well-turned phrase or an act of extraordinary kindness. You may be quicker than others to feel sickened by violence and ugliness, and you likely have a very strong conscience.”

IfsFeelsWellsMayPersonsStrongSoundTermKindnessPsychologyViolenceConscienceExtraordinaryAverageSensitivePhrasesPoeticVery StrongIntrovertOverwhelmedUglinessMoonlightAverage PersonSonatas
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
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“Of true knowledge at any time, a good part is merely convenient, necessary indeed to the worker, but not to an understanding of his subject: One can judge a building without knowing where to buy the bricks; one can understand a violin sonata without knowing how to score for the instrument. The work may in fact be better understood without a knowledge of the details of its manufacture, of attention to these tends to distract from meaning and effect.”

MayFactsUnderstandingAttentionKnowledgeKnowingSubjectsEffectsBuildingJudgingUnderstoodInstrumentsWorkersDetailsScoreBricksConvenientViolinTrue KnowledgeSonatas
Author:Jacques Barzun
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“Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the "Mona Lisa" painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.”

Has BeensIdeasGodLawScienceIndividualCreativityCreativeWrittenGroupsLandPolicyDivineShapesComputerSpringUltimateFingersClubsPhysicsReportsLeapSparksAdamCommitteesTestamentConferencesNew TestamentLaws Of PhysicsCreative IdeasMona LisaSonatas
Author:Alfred Whitney Griswold
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“Why should a novelist not also be a historian? To force unnatural divisions within the English language is to work against its capacious and accommodating nature. To expect a writer to produce only novels, or only histories, is equivalent to demanding from a composer that he or she write only string quartets or piano sonatas.”

ShouldWritingLanguageForceNovelProducePianoNovelistsStringsDivisionHistorianComposerEnglish LanguageUnnaturalQuartetsSonatasString Quartets
Author:Peter Ackroyd
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“When we have an experience -- hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sun set from a particular window of a particular room -- on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time. Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage”

PersonsPleasureRoomsSunParticularWindowHearingOccasionsYieldMaking LoveEconomistUtilityPsychologistSun SetSonatas
Book:Stumbling on Happiness
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“As you deal with thumb-crossings, or fingerings for the F-sharp-minor scale, or chromatic scales in double thirds, it is hard to accept that these will eventually allow you to probe eternity in the final movement of Beethoven's last sonata. Imagine that you are scrubbing the grout in your bathroom and are told that removing every last particle of mildew will somehow enable you to deliver the Gettysburg Address.”

HardLastsDealsAcceptingImagineMovementThirdsEternityFinalsScalesAddressesImagine ThatMinorsBathroomParticlesThumbsCrossingsGettysburgSonatasGettysburg AddressMildew
Author:Jeremy Denk
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“I am part of a light, and it is the music. The Light fills my six senses: I see it, hear, feel, smell, touch and think. Thinking of it means my sixth sense. Particles of Light are written note. A bolt of lightning can be an entire sonata. A thousand balls of lightening is a concert.. For this concert I have created a Ball Lightning, which can be heard on the icy peaks of the Himalayas.”

ThinkingFeelsMeanLightWrittenHeardThousandSixBallsNotesSmellSensesConcertsLightningParticlesBoltsIcySixth SenseHimalayasSonatas
Author:Nikola Tesla
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“A strange adventure befell me while I was playing my Sonata in B flat minor before some English friends. I had played the Allegro and the Scherzo more or less correctly. I was about to attack the March when suddenly I saw arising from the body of my piano those cursed creatures which had appeared to me one lugubrious night at the Chartreuse. I had to leave for one instant to pull myself together after which I continued without saying anything.”

PeopleBodyTogetherNightSawsStrangeAdventureCreaturesPerformancesPianoInstantFlatsMarchConcertsMinorsCursedSonatasChartreuse
Author:Frederic Chopin
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“Life is a refining process. Our response to it determines whether we'll be ground down or polished up. On a piano, one person sits down and plays sonatas, while another merely bangs away at "Chopsticks." The piano is not responsible. It's how you touch the keys that makes the difference. It's how you play what life gives you that determines your joy and shine.”

GivingPersonsPlayLife IsJoyProcessDifferencesAttitudeKeysResponsibleDown AndShiningResponseDeterminePianoBangsPolishedRefiningSonatasChopsticks
Book:Boomerang Joy: Joy That Goes Around, Comes Around
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