A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it?
Interpretation
The quote describes the liberating power of music, suggesting that it transcends normal human limitations.
Charles Ives emphasizes that music has the potential to achieve extraordinary experiences, akin to soaring through the sky or conquering imaginary heights, which are not bound by earthly restrictions. This highlights the idea that art, particularly music, can elevate the human spirit and imagination to realms beyond physical constraints, encouraging freedom of expression and creativity.
In practice
In a speech at a music festival, one might say, 'As Charles Ives once expressed, music allows us to feel like flying where humans cannot fly.'
All melodious poets shall be hoarse as street ballads, when once the penetrating keynote of nature and spirit is sounded-the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat, which make the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood and the sap of the trees.
But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.
One thing I am certain of is that, if I have done anything good in music, it was, first, because of my father, and second, because of my wife
Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason we are inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently, when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the mind to sleep.
In some century to come, when the school children will whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones--when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic is now--perhaps then these borderland experiences may be both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense
Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's. The meaning of 'God' may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls in the world
Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
That's the most important thing to me - that if I'm gonna spend however long it takes to make a movie, give up 14 hours a day for however many weeks or months, then it's very important for me to know that I'm working with people who I respect and enjoy and that we're going for something together.
Each flitch, each board, each plank can have only one ideal use. The woodworker, applying a thousand skills, must find that ideal use and then shape the wood to realize its true potential.
Disneyland is the star, everything else is in the supporting role.
All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.
You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else.
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