Music is the reaching out towards the utmost realities by means of ordered sound.
Ralph Vaughan WilliamsRead
The great men of music close periods; they do not inaugurate them. The pioneer work, the finding of new paths, is left to smaller men.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Great musicians build on the work of those before them instead of starting new trends.
Ralph Vaughan Williams suggests that the truly influential musicians often refine and conclude musical eras rather than being the ones to initiate them. He acknowledges that the role of pioneers and innovators in music often falls to those who are less recognized but whose contributions are essential for new directions in artistic expression.
Themes
MusicInnovationArtCreativityPioneersGreatness
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the evolution of music, you might quote this to highlight the importance of both great musicians and their predecessors.
More from Ralph Vaughan Williams
All quotes βBut in the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.
Ralph Vaughan WilliamsRead
Similar quotes
He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into nonobjective painting.
Jackson PollockRead
If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
William Butler YeatsRead
Drag, at its core, is about honoring yourself and your own unique way of being a gendered, queer person. Your own unique way of using fashion to express yourself.
Sasha VelourRead
Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, and that even though only three of the books were out at that time, she held the entire massive but delicate narrative in the surest of hands.
Alan RickmanRead
A story is like something you wind out of yourself. Like a spider, it is a web you weave, and you love your story like a child.
Katherine Anne PorterRead
I want to make people feel things when they hear my music I want to give a song to someone who is going through a break up, I want to give a song to someone who loves someone and can't tell them. A song for someone who has just fallen in love and a song for just people who are living their lives.
Taylor SwiftRead