Proverb about singing

Subject: Proverbs about singing
From: GUEST,Angun
Date: 08 May 00 - 05:11 PM

Anyone knows a good proverb or a quote about singing?

Angun

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 08 May 00 - 05:17 PM

A German one: Birds who sing at dawn are eaten at dusk by the cat. (Proibably not the kind you are after ...) - Susanne

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,JZG
Date: 08 May 00 - 05:17 PM

"If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing."

But I forget who said it. Another one I like (but also can't attribute, and it's not specifically about singing) is:

"Music is too important to be left to professionals."

JZG

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 May 00 - 06:07 PM

Here is a quote I just put in the thread What is Folk in SONG.

Bright is the ring of words
when the right man rings them
Fair the fall of songs
when the singer sings them
Still they are carolled and said -
on wings they are carried -
After the singer is dead
and the maker buried.

Robert Louis Stevenson (from Songs of Travel)

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Mark Clark
Date: 08 May 00 - 06:08 PM

"Never teach a pig to sing; it is a waste of your time and it annoys the pig."

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Chocolate Pi
Date: 08 May 00 - 06:26 PM

From the fasola discussions email list:

>>"Some people say I can't sing.
>> Well, nobody can say I didn't sing."

>attributed to Florence Foster Jenkins, operatic singer
>whose recordings were marked by "rather remarkable
>shifts in tonality."

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: wysiwyg
Date: 08 May 00 - 06:29 PM

The Book of Psalms is full of quotes about singing.

~S~

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Mbo_at_ECU
Date: 08 May 00 - 06:30 PM

Praise, what about the lullaby from last night? That sure works for me!

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 08 May 00 - 07:48 PM

HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING?

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: wysiwyg
Date: 08 May 00 - 07:58 PM

The song Mbo is referring to is written out in the HearMe May 05 thread, and is by Lorre Wyatt.

More info on it is at this thread:

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.CFM?threadID=17874

~S~

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 08 May 00 - 08:22 PM

Couple for ye to ponder on:

Every time she (Edith Piaf) sings you have the feeling she's wrenching her soul from her body for the last time. Jean Cocteau

For me, singing is a way of escaping. it's another world. I'm no longer on earth.

Only when singing did I feel loved. Maria Callas

It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
Hilaire Belloc

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 08 May 00 - 08:26 PM

Sorry forgot the second quote is by Edith Piaf...

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 08 May 00 - 08:26 PM

My Grandmother used to say "Sing at the table, cry in bed" But I'm not really sure why... we used to sing at the table all the freekin' time?!?!?!?!

LOL!
{~`

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Mbo
Date: 08 May 00 - 08:32 PM

"Ponder your life, and the lives of those who are, have been, and will be...and let your voice be the instrument of the combined existence..."

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 08 May 00 - 08:41 PM

Not a proverb, but:

You can do anything to music; it doesn't mind.  -Dave Swarbrick.

Malcolm

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 08 May 00 - 08:48 PM

Song is the pen of the soul. Rabbi Chaim Drizin, at the funeral for tenor Jan Peerce

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 May 00 - 09:04 PM

Thread Creep alert, but who said If I can't dance, I don't want to be a part of YOUR revolution!?

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Chocolate Pi
Date: 08 May 00 - 09:41 PM

Mrrzy: Emma Goldman, turn-of-the century American (born in Russia, deported from the US several times) feminist and anarchist.

more quotations:
various people quoted as saying something along the lines of "give me the making of a country's songs and I will control the making of its laws" (isn't this the epigraph in "Songs that Changed the World"?)
Anything too silly to be spoken can be sung (Voltaire or Beaumarchais or someone; quoted by Shaw in Man and Superman)
"All things shall perish from under the sky
Music alone shall live, music alone shall live, music alone shall live
Never to die"

"A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision onde I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!"
Coleridge, Kubla Khan

"Now shall my inward joys arise and burst into a song." Africa, Sacred Harp 178


Chocolate Pi

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Night Owl
Date: 09 May 00 - 12:00 AM

great thread and responses....Thank you for starting it Angun!!!!

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Mbo
Date: 09 May 00 - 12:09 AM

"I'll sing my song to the wide open spaces
I'll sing my heart out to the infinite sea
I'll sing my visions to the sky-high mountains
I'll sing my song to the free....
One note, pure and easy
Playing so free, like a breath rippling by...."

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: catspaw49
Date: 09 May 00 - 12:13 AM

You're right Owl.......The only thing that always comes to mind first is something I heard Roy Clark say about Patsy Cline.

"After Patsy sang a song, you knew it had been completely sung."

Now that's one helluva' compliment......if not a proverb.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Mbo
Date: 09 May 00 - 12:23 AM

"If I get an encore
I go home feeling like a king
It's a two-way situation
I get a lot of pleasure when I sing"
--Christy Moore

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: alison
Date: 09 May 00 - 12:33 AM

Swans sing before they die - t'were no bad thing
should certain persons die before they sing.

S.T.Coleridge

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Amergin
Date: 09 May 00 - 03:03 AM

Through all this world of joy and sorrow We still can have singing tomorrow

Pete Seeger

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Sian in Wales
Date: 09 May 00 - 05:13 AM

My dad had a version of Clinton's Gran's: Sing at the table, die in the workhouse (he could be quite miserable, by dad...)

Then there's the song The Silver Swan (which, living, hath no note. When Death approached unlocked her silent throat, etc.)

And the most well known in Welsh is, "Can di bennill mwyn i'th nain, Ac fe gan dy nain i tithau." (Sing a gentle verse to your Granny, and your Granny will sing back to you) Sort of ... one good turn deserves another.

Sian

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: keltcgrasshoppper
Date: 09 May 00 - 07:14 AM

"And even the sun in dawn a chorus sings, a celestial melody to the earth below" Tjaden ....Have a great day KGH..

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 09 May 00 - 03:08 PM

Life is a shipwreck but we should not forget to sing in the lifeboats. Voltaire.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Angun
Date: 09 May 00 - 03:11 PM

Thanks to all of you! What a great place this is!

Anyone know this in gaelic? A sharing of gold is but brief, but a sharing of song lasts long. ~Gaelic Proverb~

Angun

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Wesley S
Date: 09 May 00 - 04:22 PM

Someone said "Pete Seeger taught the world to sing and we haven't forgiven him yet"

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 09 May 00 - 05:08 PM

"Exuberance is beauty." -- William Blake

It applies to singing as well as anything else.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: fulurum
Date: 09 May 00 - 05:13 PM

music is the soul of the world embedded in sound

unknown

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Lanfranc
Date: 09 May 00 - 06:29 PM

"Sing before breakfast, cry before night" was a saying in my mother's family in Yorkshire.

Never stopped me though!

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 10 May 00 - 03:46 AM

"If the bar empties early, the Skiffler must be singing" (anon but usedd widely in UK,and has over the last 20 or so years spread to Greece as well)
RtS

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: keltcgrasshoppper
Date: 10 May 00 - 07:05 AM

"Do lovely things, not dream them, all day long, And so make life, and death, and that forever, one grand sweet song." Charles Kingsley

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 10 May 00 - 08:41 AM

To JZG ('way up near the top of the thread):
"If you can walk, you can dance...etc." is attributed to the Yoruba people of Nigeria.

"Music is too important to be left to professionals" I've seen attributed to Michelle Shocked!

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: folk1234
Date: 10 May 00 - 12:32 PM

There was an earlier thread re the Song, "When You Learn a Song, You've Got A Friend For Life".

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Metchosin
Date: 10 May 00 - 12:45 PM

slight drift..."I write music as a sow piddles" Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: kendall
Date: 10 May 00 - 12:59 PM

Make a joyful noise unto the lord..come into his presense with singing and into his courts with praise.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 12 May 00 - 08:05 AM

Not about singing but stillmusic-related, got this from my current reading (Terminal event by James Thayer):
The narrator is an amateur blues harp player:"A drum solo is like a sneeze. You know when it's coming but you can't do a damn thing about it."
RtS

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Wolfgang
Date: 12 May 00 - 08:18 AM

German song:
Wo man singt, da lass Dich ruhig nieder,
böse Menschen haben keine Lieder.

(Where there's singing, sit down without fear,
mean people do not have songs)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Allan C.
Date: 12 May 00 - 08:46 AM

Among my all-time favorites is:

"Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."
-Henry Van Dyke

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Robo
Date: 13 May 00 - 01:51 AM

Dave . . . loved the Belloc. Here's an old one from the Stones' "December's Children" album that could draw some comment: It's "The Singer, Not the Song."

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 May 00 - 02:31 AM

"Then to my raptured ear
Let one sweet song be giv'n
Let music charm me last on earth
And greet me first in heav'n."

Last verse of a song that Ginny Hawker, among others, sings. Ebbie

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 13 May 00 - 02:43 AM

Another slight creep - there's one about a whistling woman, in that she shouldn't or else some great calamity will occur, but I can't remember it too well - it is before 8.00am on a Saturday!!

LTS

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 13 May 00 - 01:03 PM

Liz, I think you're thinking about:

A Whistling woman and a crowing hen
Come alike to no good end.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,grace
Date: 03 Jan 05 - 10:55 PM

"my song is my gift; this one's for you"

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jan 05 - 02:03 PM

"Qui orationem cantat, bis orat"
"He who sings his prayers, prays twice"
St. Augustine

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Burke
Date: 04 Jan 05 - 05:59 PM

Guest, thanks for the original. I've heard it as "He who sings, prays twice" and "He who sings well, prays twice." I'm equally glad to know the source.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Mudlark
Date: 04 Jan 05 - 06:32 PM

Isak Dinesen said, "All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story." Equally true of music/song.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Jan 05 - 09:08 PM

Alice Gerrard

For you gave me a song
Of a place that I call home;
A song of then,
A song of now,
A song of yet to come.

Charley Noble