Quotes on Music Is

I've found in composing that being simple and profound—having in-depthness in your music—is the most difficult thing to do. Anybody can write a whole lot of notes, which may or may not say something . . . But why make it complicated for the musicians to play? Why make it difficult for the listeners to hear?

Silence is the nest and music is the bird. The bird leaves the nest early in the morning and returns to the nest in the evening. Similarly, in the spiritual world, divine music comes from the inmost soul of Silence.

Music is like making love: either all or nothing.

Music is a defining element of character.

Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.

I find above all that the expression, atonal music, is most unfortunate — it is on a par with calling flying the art of not falling, or swimming the art of not drowning.

My music is not modern, it is merely badly played

You need music, I don't know why. It's probably one of those Joe Campbell questions, why we need ritual. We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.

Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.

Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.

Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent.

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful.

Music is a fantastic peacekeeper of the world, it is integral to harmony, and it is a required fundamental of human emotion.

My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery.

One thing that really appeals to me is this idea of music being a living thing that has an evolution that, in a way, enables the artist to sell a process rather than a piece of product.

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

I dont ever want to do anything mediocre. I hear the music in the charts and I dont mean to be rude, but those people have no soul. Learning from music is like eating a meal - you have to pace yourself. You cant take everything from it all at once. I want to be different, definitely. Im not a one trick pony. Im at least a five-trick pony.

Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God.

More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers compose unintelligible music is that people should admire what they cannot understand; indeed, admire that which has no meaning or principle.

Music is a big factor in helping the illusion of the film come to life. The same way music brings back different periods of our lives.