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Quotes about music

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Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
- Comedy
We want our sound to go into the soul of the audience, and see if it can awaken some little thing in their minds… ‘Cause there are so many sleeping people.
Jimi Hendrix1942–1970Dick Cavett interview (1969)
Clarionet, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet⁠—two clarionets.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
- Comedy
The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.
Arthur Schopenhauer1788–1860The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859), Vol. I, Ch. II
- Art
It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Personal Recollections (1981), p. 96
- Technology
People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them — that does not occur to them.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Culture and Value (1980), p. 36e
- Art
- Poetry
It would have been better if you had died and Gershwin had written the elegy.
Oscar Levant1906–1972On a friend’s elegy for Gershwin; recounted in The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965)
- Clever Jabs
The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be.
Pete Seeger1919–2014How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger (1981), p. 95
Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos,
sob on the long cool winding saxophones.
Go to it, O jazzmen.
Carl Sandburg1878–1967“Jazz Fantasia” (1920)
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.
MOMary Oliver1935–2019Evidence (2009), “Evidence”
- Virtue
Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches⁠—he has made music sick.
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Der Fall Wagner (1888)
- Clever Jabs
In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.
Charles Mingus1922–1979Statement to Nat Hentoff , as quoted in California Rock, California Sound: The Music of Los Angeles and Southern California (1979) by Anthony Fawcett, p. 56
- Change
In memory everything seems to happen to music.
Tennessee Williams1911–1983The Glass Menagerie (1944)
Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
William Congreve1670–1729The Mourning Bride (1697)
He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power.
George Sand1804–1876Histoire de ma vie (1854-55), on Chopin’s Preludes