On music—2

People still love to write about music…

The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.

Thomas Beecham . 1879-1961 . British conductor

The musical equivalent of the towers of St Pancras Station.

Thomas Beecham . as above . of Elgar’s first symphony [51:27]

If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what to do, and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed.

attrib, Alfred Brendel . 1931-  . Austrian pianist, poet, and author

The only thing my mother would say about my music—I’d say, “Mom, listen to this”, and she’d say, “Junior, I know who you are”.

Ornette Coleman . 1930-  . American jazz saxophonist and composer

You are the music while the music lasts.

TS Eliot . 1888-1965 . American poet, dramatist and publisher . The Dry Salvages

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Gustave Flaubert . 1821-1880 . French novelist . Madame Bovary

I don’t care much about music.  What I like is sounds.

Dizzy Gillespie . 1917-1993 . American jazz musician

I have suffered for my music. Now it’s your turn.

Neil Innes . 1944-  . English writer and performer of comic songs

Stand up and take your dissonance like a man.

Charles Ives . 1874-1954 . American composer [pictured] . to a complainant of his work, Fourth of July [6:06]—as you will hear in the final thirty seconds the complainant had a point

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

Igor Stravinsky . 1882-1971 . Russian-born composer

Music’s exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.

Igor Stravinsky . as above 

Music has taken a bad turn; these young people have no idea how to write a melody, they just give us shavings, which they dress up to look like a lion’s mane and shake at us.

Richard Wagner . 1813-1883 . German composer, conductor

Related material:
>  Quotations:  On music

selection copyright © 2016 Jeremy Marchant . uploaded 20 september 2016