Classic Music Quotes

• A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

  Leopold Stokowski

  Inspirational, Music, Art

  Leopold Stokowski's address to an audience at Carnegie Hall, as quoted in The New York Times, May 11, 1967.

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• If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

  Gustav Mahler

  Funny, Music, Expression

  Letter to Max Marschalk, March 26, 1896.

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• Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Music, Writing, Thank God

  Letter to Ferdinand Ries, 20 Dec. 1822

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• I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.

  Lily Tomlin

  Inspirational, Funny, Humor

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• Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Jazz And Life, Boundaries

  "Bird: the legend of Charlie Parker". Book by Robert George Reisner, p. 27, 1977.

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• If music be the food of love, play on.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Inspirational, Romantic

  'Twelfth Night' (1601) act 1, sc. 1, l. 1

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• There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

  T. S. Eliot

  Inspirational, Music, Fear

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• To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.

  Nina Simone

  Music, Mean, Play

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• A good composer is slowly discovered and a bad composer is slowly found out.

  Ernest Newman

  Music, Found, Composer

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• I've outdone anyone you can name - Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

  James Brown

  Music, Names, Tunes

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• They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Men

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

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• Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Music, Ocean, Blessed

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• Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

  George Szell

  Music, Giving, Jazz And Life

  Newsweek 28 Jan. 1963

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• A love of classical music is only partially a natural response to hearing the works performed, it also must come about by a decision to listen carefully, to pay close attention, a decision inevitably motivated by the cultural and social prestige of the art.

  Charles Rosen

  Art, Decision, Attention

  Charles Rosen (2002). “Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist”, p.236, Simon and Schuster

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• Many fail to realize this great recording industry was built by so-called jazz artists. And at the other end of the spectrum, a base in European classical music as well.

  Ahmad Jamal

  Music, Artist, Europe

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• Man, there's no boundary line to art!

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Men

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

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• The piano is a monster that screams when you touch its teeth.

  Andres Segovia

  Music, Piano, Monsters

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• Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.

  Nina Simone

  Music, White, Racism

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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  Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Men

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

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• Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

  Noel Coward

  Music, Work, Extraordinary

  'Private Lives' (1930) act 1

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• No matter what culture you're from, everyone loves music.

  Billy Joel

  Music, Healing, Matter

  Interview with Anthony DeCurtis, www.rollingstone.com. November 06, 1986.

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• Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Funny, Music, Witty

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

  Elvis Presley

  Music, Witty, Humorous

  Quoted in Robert Byrne, The Other 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1984)

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

  Simon Rattle

  Music, Piano, Composer

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• Music expresses that which cannot be put into words.

  Victor Hugo

  Music, Sound And Music, Musical Life

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