Music Quotes

First you master your instrument. Then you master the music. Then you forget about all the shit you just learned and just play.

If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn’t have to go to an osteopath, then there’s something wrong.

Alcibiades was a man who well understood good living: he specifically banished music from his table so that it should not interfere with the conversation, justifying this with the reason which Plato ascribes to him, that it is the practice of commonplace men to invite musicians and singers to their feasts since they lack that […]

I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it’s the right one, and it will probably whip the guy with twenty notes.

You would only lose the spontaneous quality of your melody, and end by writing bad Ravel. (To George Gershwin, on refusing him as a pupil.)

The end of all good music is to affect the soul.

The music masters familiarizes children’s minds with rhythms and melodies, thus making them more civilized, more balanced, better adjusted in themselves, and more capable in whatever they say or do, for rhythm and harmony are essential to the whole of life.

The blues ain’t nothing but a good man feelin’ bad.

Ahh, the soothing o’ the Pipes… Whenever I find myself missing its melodious sounds, I just toss the cat in the dryer on low heat.

Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul.