music quotes

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Sol
Date: 09 Nov 23 - 07:55 AM

When the leader of a restaurant band spotted Oscar Wilde having a meal in the premises, he asked the waiter to give the poet a note that said "Is there anything you would like us to play?"
Mr Wilde allegedly responded with one word ..."Dominoes"

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Sol
Date: 07 Nov 23 - 10:52 AM

“I inherited a painting and a violin which turned out to be a Rembrandt and a Stradivarius. Unfortunately, Rembrandt made lousy violins and Stradivarius was a terrible painter.”
? Tommy Cooper

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GerryM
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 05:12 PM

The quoteinvestigator site, https://quoteinvestigator.com/?s=music, is full of music quotes. Here are just a few – you can follow up on the attributions, if you are so inclined.

To Be True Music It Must Repeat the Thoughts and Aspirations of the People and the Time. My People Are Americans. My Time Is Today.

Poetry Is Music Written for the Human Voice.

Music Begins Where Language Ends.

All the Good Music’s Already Been Written By People With Wigs and Stuff On.

Music Is the Most Unpleasant and the Most Expensive of All Noises.

Music Itself Is Going To Become Like Running Water or Electricity.

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GerryM
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 05:01 PM

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GerryM
Date: 03 Nov 23 - 04:17 PM

And the doctor said to give him jug band music/It seems to make him feel just fine.

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GerryM
Date: 03 Nov 23 - 07:42 AM

"Wagner’s music, I have been informed, is really much better than it sounds." Bill Nye on Wagner. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/11/25/wagner-better/

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GerryM
Date: 03 Nov 23 - 05:32 AM

Put another nickel in/In the nickelodeon/All I want is having you/And music, music, music.

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 12:59 AM

"[M]usic is socially meaningful not entirely but largely because it provides means by which people recognise identities and places, and the boundaries which separate them."

    -- Martin Stokes (King's College London)

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: G-Force
Date: 09 Nov 23 - 08:41 AM

Talking of Brahms, I believe he said that "the metronome is of no value".

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 08:10 AM

One more for now from that bon vivant Jean Sibelius: "All the doctors who wanted to forbid me to smoke and to drink are dead."

(A unofficial one from Mrs Sibelius: "Jean, get out of that bloody pub! You have a symphony to finish!" I made that up, though the sentiment is accurate!)

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 07:55 AM

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.
--Igor Stravinsky

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 07:43 AM

“Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands – and all you can do is scratch it.”

--Sir Thomas Beecham to a lady cellist

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 06:30 AM

"It means I don't ever have to work again if I don't want to..." --Don McLean when asked what American Pie meant.

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 05:39 AM

From Crackerjack, c. 50 years ago: If music be the food of love, get your fish and chips off
my piano...

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Nov 23 - 07:31 AM

"Wagner has beautiful moments, but awful quarters of an hour." Rossini on Wagner

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Mo the caller
Date: 07 Nov 23 - 04:05 AM

" The 'dots' aren't the music. the 'music' is what happens when you play the dots." (I'm probably misquoting David Oliver)

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 13 Nov 23 - 08:59 AM

Music is the food of love..... try eating vinyl !!

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Rain Dog
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 12:44 PM

"Give us a song there, will ya?"

Heard at various family gatherings over the years.

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 06:08 AM

   ((( CRACKERJACK !!! )))

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: NightWing
Date: 03 Nov 23 - 08:38 PM

This seems appropriate for this thread too:

A Minor Bird

I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;
Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.
And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.

— Robert Frost —

(emphasis added)

BB,
NightWing

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: NightWing
Date: 03 Nov 23 - 07:20 PM

"Music is the sound that feelings make."

I assume this is quoting someone, but *I* know it from a t-shirt I bought from a music store in North Carolina :-)

BB,
NightWing

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 03 Nov 23 - 10:50 AM

Oldham Tinkers

We call our dog Grieg

All he can do is pee agin t'suite

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 03 Nov 23 - 07:28 AM

I've suffered for my music. Now it's your turn

(Neil Innes on RWT)

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: gillymor
Date: 07 Nov 23 - 11:18 AM

It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people- Woody Guthrie

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: gillymor
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 06:44 AM

When I was a little boy, I told my dad, 'When I grow up, I want to be a musician.' My dad said: 'You can't do both, Son'.
-Chet Atkins

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: gillymor
Date: 03 Nov 23 - 06:13 PM

Ernest Shackleton risked drowning to rescue a musical instrument, saying, “We must have that banjo. It’s vital mental medicine."

Bill Monroe when asked how he felt about Elvis recording his "Blue Moon of Kentucky" responded "Them were some powerful royalty checks."

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: gillymor
Date: 03 Nov 23 - 10:55 AM

A couple attributed to Jascha Heifetz (from my faulty memory)-

After a recital an admirer said to Heifetz "Your Stradivarius never sounded so beautiful". Heifetz held the instrument up to his ear and said "Funny, I don't hear anything."

Another admirer said "I'd give anything to play like you" and he responded with the query "Would you give 16 hours a day for your entire life?"

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 19 Nov 23 - 11:10 AM

'got yer moosic, boy?- Oscar Woods to me about 1966

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,RJM
Date: 13 Nov 23 - 02:48 AM

People say that i could sing the phone book and make it sound good. EDITH PIAF

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,RJM
Date: 12 Nov 23 - 04:51 PM

Martin Carthy on English folk music: "I'm not interested in heritage - this stuff is alive. It [folk music] exceeded all human understanding, and if it called out to you, you could disappear and be sucked into it.

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 12 Nov 23 - 09:01 AM

Wilderness. The word itself is music.

Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.146, University of Arizona Press

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,RJM
Date: 12 Nov 23 - 01:54 AM

The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be. Pete Seeger

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,RJM
Date: 10 Nov 23 - 01:23 PM

(As a boy) I was listening to Sonny Boy Williamson's (I) records and I would close my eyes and I could visualize myself playing the harp.
— Junior Wells

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 10 Nov 23 - 06:38 AM

"A good musician knows when not to join in"

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 10 Nov 23 - 05:12 AM

I'd agree your point about the importance of the silences in music, Dick, but not that it has no religious aspect & I'm sure you know that, living in Ireland?

Quote from an MC on a lively night at a Glasgow pub years ago when the choice of songs was not acceptable to some in the crowd & provoked some shouting etc...

'C'moan' boys, it's nice tae be nice'

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,RJM
Date: 10 Nov 23 - 04:29 AM

Music is also about learning to play the silences.Dick Miles

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,RJM
Date: 10 Nov 23 - 04:25 AM

“Music is like a psychiatrist. You can tell your guitar things you can’t tell people. And it will come back with things people can’t tell you”. (Paul McCartney)

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,The Man from UNCOOL
Date: 08 Nov 23 - 09:34 PM

Maybe my misattribution, and maybe not exact but
"Music is not too fuzzy for words, but too precise for words".
Brahms, I think, possibly Schumann [and, possibly A. N. Other Classical composer]
More certainly by Brahms, when provoked by a critic [or similar] that Wagner had "stolen" [in fact, used in one of his own compositions, apparently uncredited] one of his melodies:  "Mine's still there".

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,RJM
Date: 08 Nov 23 - 01:56 PM

Oscar Wilde: "Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory."

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 07 Nov 23 - 04:32 AM

"I can't play until I've had a drink,when I've had a drink I can't play"

In response to the question "What part does drink play in your music" asked on a TV program about Irish music.

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,rijm
Date: 06 Nov 23 - 04:00 PM

“The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.” — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 05 Nov 23 - 12:00 PM

Playing for the ceili at the Cape Clear Island Storytelling Festival about 1995, I stopped for the interval (at about midnight- standard time in Cape Clear) I'd hardly left the stage when someone brought me a big bag of chips!
There'd been a very funny poet on about half an hour before & I'll always treasure his loud comment to his pal.

He said bitterly 'you see what I mean, poets have to queue for chips'

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,John Aloysius Fahey
Date: 05 Nov 23 - 08:54 AM

”I never considered for a minute that I had talent,
What I did have
was divine inspiration and an open subconscious.”

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,NS
Date: 05 Nov 23 - 07:01 AM

“He’s got Van Gogh’s ear for music”. - Billy Wilder (allegedly).

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Nov 23 - 12:36 AM

I have a big problem with piped music I like either silence or to listen to music properly.Sting

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,RJM
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 04:10 PM

Do you know the Wild Rover"
I replied Yes I met him this morning and he still had a hangover
Yes, Jim, Alex did, I would have done the same myself

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,Roger
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 01:15 PM

Ain't it hard to stumble when you've got no place to fall - Stranger Blues.
Lifes to short for sensible socks - me.

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 11:55 AM

yes- he was there- did he tell you the story!

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 11:06 AM

With the late Alex McKie?

Subject: RE: music quotes
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 04 Nov 23 - 09:59 AM

Annie May, your quote reminded me of the time when I played the pubs in West Cork in the 90s. Annie May's in Skibbereen was one of them. I did for a fee plus pints of Murphy's. I did it several times before a new barman said he'd been told by the owners to stop the free drink (no more than 3 pints and tea for the missus). So that's another reason I left old Skibbereen, and very quickly....