Music Quotes

Soprano: “I must insist, Maestro, that my way is right. Remember, I am a star.” Toscanini: “The only stars I recognize, Madam, are in heaven. Down here, we are all workers in the cause of music.”

Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.

A painter paints pictures on canvas but musicians paint their pictures on silence.

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.

All of us contain Music and Truth, but most of us can’t get it out.

The Church knew what the Psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise Him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church’s greatest ornament.

Some sounds are as good as two cups of coffee. Georgian chants are a fantastic energy source.

We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often more than that in the presence of music without music.

The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a downside.