Quotes on music

(These are taken from Musical Wit by Vicky Edwards.)

I wish you music to help with the burdens of life, and to help you release your happiness to others. - Ludwig van Beethoven

Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life. - Art Blakey

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. - Charlie Parker

Master your instrument, master the music, and then forget all that crap and just play. - Charlie Parker

I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but most importantly music, for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys of learning. - Plato

I am a servant of the music... and if I get caught up in ego, I'll lose everything... it'll burn and that's a guarantee. - Eric Clapton

The piano is the easiest instrument to play in the beginning, and the hardest to master in the end. - Vladimir Horowitz

The piano is able to communicatate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air. - Kenneth Miller

I'm an interpreter of stories. When I perform it's like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories. - Nat King Cole

If I look a buffoon while I'm transported by a piece of music, then so be it; I don't care. - Sue Perkins on training as a conductor on the BBC's Maestro programme.

Anyone who thinks conducting is just waving their arms around is going to get a rude awakening if they try it out. - Bradley Walsh on training as a conductor on the BBC's Maestro programme.

Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director. - Michael Tilson Thomas

Where words fail, music speaks. - Hans Christian Andersen

Music is love in search of a word. - Sidney Lanier

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary. - Martin Luther

Music is the key to the female heart. - Johann G. Seume

A love song is just a caress set to music. - Sigmund Romberg

Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them. - Louis Armstrong

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time, incredible and inconceivable. - Aaron Copland