So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.
Aaron CoplandRead
The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking "Is there a meaning to music?" My answer would be, "Yes", And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be "No."
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses the complexity of understanding the meaning of music, affirming its existence while acknowledging the difficulty of articulating it.
Aaron Copland emphasizes that while music undoubtedly holds meaning, it eludes simplistic verbal description. Music resonates deeply and can convey emotions and messages that are often beyond the reach of words, highlighting the intrinsic value and subjective experience of art.
Themes
MusicMeaningArtExpressionEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on the significance of art in human culture.
More from Aaron Copland
All quotes →I hope my recordings of my own works won't inhibit other people's performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn't always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.
Aaron CoplandRead
Someone once asked me... whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: "Every day!"
Aaron CoplandRead
To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
Aaron CoplandRead
Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
Aaron CoplandRead
You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.
Aaron CoplandRead
Similar quotes
For me, music and life are all about style.
Miles DavisRead
OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.
Ambrose BierceRead
There are wonderfully talented actresses. It's a really rich field. There isn't as rich a field of material.
Meryl StreepRead
All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth.
Iris MurdochRead
The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner.
William HazlittRead
Architecture begins to matter when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads.
Paul GoldbergerRead