I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.
Johann Sebastian BachRead
Music's only purpose should be for the glory of God and the recreation _x000D_ of the human spirit.
Interpretation
Music should serve to honor God and uplift the human spirit.
Johann Sebastian Bach emphasizes that the primary role of music is not merely entertainment, but rather a means to glorify God and rejuvenate the spirit of humanity. This perspective highlights the profound connection between art and spirituality, asserting that music can be a powerful force for good and inspiration in people's lives.
In practice
A church service where hymns are sung to honor God.
I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.
I have always kept one end in view, namely ... to conduct a well-regulated church music to the honour of God.
On one of those rare occasions when Bach appraised his own life's work, he remarked: I worked hard.
I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results.
God's gift to his sorrowing creatures is a joy worthy of their destiny.
I know this is going to sound very self-serving, and I apologize for it, but if you can write comedy, you can pretty much write anything, because it's the hardest. It's the most technically demanding, the most precisely evaluated form of writing. People know if it works or not. There's a big button marked 'fail,' and that's when nobody laughs.
Man must speak, then sing, then dance. The speaking is the brain, the thinking man. The singing is the emotion. The dancing is the Dionysian ecstasy which carries away all.
'Art or anti-art?' was the question I asked when I returned from Munich in 1912 and decided to abandon pure painting or painting for its own sake. I thought of introducing elements alien to painting as the only way out of a pictorial and chromatic dead end.
A good poem looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain.
You can't trust an artist that just makes good records.
If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.
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