If they say they don't like the way I play Beethoven, then I can swallow that, and maybe they're right. But if they don't like what I've written, then it's about me.
Stephen HoughRead
Why do people compose music? Why do people listen to music? When we go into a concert, we go into a place where we want to experience a sort of ecstasy, to come out of ourselves.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Music serves as a means for both creation and escape, allowing people to transcend their everyday experiences.
In this quote, Stephen Hough reflects on the profound reasons behind the acts of composing and listening to music. He suggests that music is not just an art form but a way to attain a heightened emotional state, providing an escape from the mundane and allowing individuals to experience a sublime connection with something greater than themselves, often felt at concerts where shared emotions culminate in a collective ecstasy.
Themes
MusicEcstasyExperienceEmotionCreation
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech at a music festival, one could use this quote to highlight the transformative power of music.
More from Stephen Hough
All quotes →Unlike sport, music is not about winning or keeping fit or promoting your town or school; it's about celebrating, to a level approaching ecstasy, the deepest human longings.
Stephen HoughRead
Life is an incurable disease leading to death, but it's also an unrequested gift, which, if we can manage to keep giving it away to others, can keep giving back everything to us.
Stephen HoughRead
All things of beauty can speak to us of God, and I'm very happy to listen to and be inspired by people of every religious background.
Stephen HoughRead
Live in the present moment. The past and future are nonexistent. Only the present can be grasped or, better, embraced.
Stephen HoughRead
In Britten or Berg, there's a tension between the sweet and the sour, between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the tonal and the atonal, the happy and the sad. That, to me, is what all western art is about - that tension. It's why we want to say anything at all.
Stephen HoughRead
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