Rudi's Music Quotes

The Feeling Inside
A musicianer just has to learn for himself, just by playing and listening... There ain't no one can write down the feeling you have to have. That's from inside yourself.
Sidney Bechet

Say What You Mean
If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.
Ned Rorem

Supermuso?
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times and to the latest.
Henry David Thoreau

It's All Just Shorthand?
Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty are directly conveyed to man in music, and that is its power and significance.
Leo Tolstoy

Confucius say...
Music produces a kind of pleasure that human nature cannot do without.
Confucius

Orchestral Maneuvres
The hardest thing in the world is to start an orchestra, and the next hardest, to stop it.
Hans Richter

Reasons To Compose
People compose for many reasons:
to become immortal;
because the pianoforte happens to be open;
to become a millionaire;
because of the praise of friends;
because they have looked into a pair of beautiful eyes;
or for no reason whatsoever.
Robert Schumann

When a Songwriter Dies
When a songwriter dies, the minute you read the list of songs he wrote, you start to identify with him- "Oh, my God, he wrote that. I remember the first time I heard that song, I was at a dance with a girl."

Abel Green

What The Public Wants...
The public doesnt want new music; the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead.
Arthur Honegger

She is a Swinger
Lovers have come and gone, but only my gentle mistress stays. She is beautiful and gentle. She is a swinger. She has grace. To hear her speak, you cant believe your ears. She is ten thousand years old. She is as modern as tomorrow, a brand new woman every day. Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.
Duke Ellington

On a Mission...
We look for new sonorities, new intervals, new forms. Where it will lead I dont know. I dont want to know. It would be like knowing the date of my death.
Pierre Boulez

Second Chances
I love recording because if something lovely does happen, there is a sense of permanence, and if it doesn't happen, one has a second chance to achieve an ideal.

Glen Gould

Little Houses
Old songs are more than tunes, they are little houses in which our hearts once lived.

Ben Hecht

To sing is to love...
To sing is to love and affirm, to fly and to soar, to coast into the hearts of the people who listen, to tell them that life is to live, that love is there, that nothing is a promise, but that beauty exists, and must be hunted for and found.
Joan Baez

Be a Song
There's this great line in a Chrissie Hynde song where she says, "When I first heard a song flying into the sun, I wanted to be one." You know, it's not that you want to sing the song, its that you want to be one.
Joan Osborne

What the Songs Say
I believe its no good to talk about your songs; its wrong. You should leave your songs alone and let them say what they say; let people take what they want from them.
Paul Simon

Heaven and Earth
The composer, as in old China, joins Heaven and Earth with threads of sounds.
Alan Hovhaness

Pause For Thought
The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses betweeen the notes- ah, that is where the art resides!
Artur Schnabel

Catching Sounds
All I know is, for every note, there is another note that melts it. I just hear a sound coming into my head and hope to catch it with my hands.
Errol Garner

Respect
The greatest respect an artist can pay to music is to give it life.
Pablo Casals

Sleepwalking
The composer reveals the innermost being of the world and expresses the deepest wisdom in a language which his own reason does not understand; like a sleepwalker, who tells things of which he has no clear knowledge when he is awake.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Sitting Thinking.
There are two things John and I always do when were going to sit down and write a song. First of all we sit down. Then we think about writing a song.
Paul McCartney

Grinch
Blast this Christmas music! It's joyful and triumphant.
From "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas"

What's going on?
There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
Sir Thomas Beecham

Silent Write
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
Victor Hugo

Keep it clean
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Red Auerbach

Order of imposition
Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.
Yehudi Menuhin

Inspiration
My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a producer.
Cole Porter

The great thaw
Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.
Anais Nin

Feelings
Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.
E.Y. Harburg (Edgar Yipsel) (1898 - 1981)

Tone deaf?
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
Elvis Presley

One step beyond
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.
Joan Baez

Elusive Gift
The adventure of composition is a mystery. The muse has her ways, she hides from you, comes for you in the middle of the night, at midday, at dawn. You must believe wholeheartedly in this divine power. Its an elusive gift that can appear at any time, anywhere. Artists are in awe of it.
Mickey Hart

The purpose of Music?
Real music is not for wealth,
not for honours
or even the joys of the mind…
but as a path for realisation and salvation.
Ali Akbar Khan

Mama's Blues
When it came to dollars, everyone got uptight. Probably the biggest down in my life was being in a pop group and finding out just how much it was like everything it was supposed to be against.
Mama Cass Elliot

Reach Inside
The hardest part of playing is starting, getting up on stage and relaxing in the moment. Before you can share your music with others, you must reach for it inside yourself, in solitude. It is a form of meditation that sometimes takes many hours and sometimes comes in a flash.

The transition from this solitary state to the arena of public performance is critical and takes practice. Access All Areas is not granted freely. This is the point of no return, of great stress and great joy.
Mickey Hart

100% Bliss
When I'm playing, I'm in the now,
and I experience how I'm feeling right there onstage,
and sometimes I'm able to get into a state of 100% bliss.

It's a really joyous serene place.
Bill Kreutzmann

Order of merit?
It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one,
better to perform one than to listen to one,
better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means
of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of `culture?.
John Cage

Elevator Music
You know, I'm starting to feel pretty good.
I know I've written some classic songs that
someday are going to be elevator music, and
that makes me feel pretty good.
Christopher Cross

Drive
The drive to create, perform, and reproduce
music is so common to all mankind, a drive so
basic that when a man cannot find an
instrument to suit him, he creates his own.
Joseph Howard

Practice, practice, practice...
If I don't practice for one day, I know it;
if I don't practice for two days,
the critics know it;
if I don't practice for three days,
the audience knows it.
Ignacy Paderewski

Discerning Listeners
My music is best understood by children and animals.
Igor Stravinsky

All that Jazz
It took me 20 years of study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen 5 minutes and understand it.

(In response to a woman in the audience complaining that she didn't understand what he was playing)
Miles Davis

Reaction to singing?
When I'm singing, I'm inside of it....
I feel oh, like I feel when you're first in love, when you're first touching someone - chills, things slipping all over me.
A lot of times when I get off, I want to make love.
Janis Joplin

Play from the Heart
When you play from your heart,
all of a sudden there's no gravity.
You don't feel the weight of the world,
of bills, of anything.
That's why people love it.
Your so-called insurmountable problems disappear,
and instead of problems you get possibilities.
Carlos Santana

A tap too far.
He who makes a mistake is still our friend;
He who adds to, or shortens, a melody is still our friend;
But he who violates a rhythm unawares
Can never be our friend.
Ishaq Ibn Ibrahim

Friends and foes
My own friends are those who give good performances.
My enemies are those who in any way debase music.
George Bernard Shaw

Mediocrity
It isn't evil that's ruining the earth,
but mediocrity.
The crime is not that Nero played
while Rome burned,
but that he played badly.
Ned Rorem

Beating stuff up.
If your not listening to the person next to you, then you're just beating stuff up.
Airto Moreira

Bring your imagination...
All my concerts had no sounds in them:
they were completely silent.
People had to make their own music in their minds.
Yoko Ono

Music Gives a Soul
Music gives a soul to the universe,
wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness,
gaiety and life to everything.

It is the essence of order,
and leads to all that is good, just and beautiful, of which it is the invisible,
but never less, dazzling, passionate, and eternal form.
Plato

I have to
I have to create.
I have to dig in the earth;
I have to make something grow;
I have to bake something;
I have to write something;
I have to sing something;
I have to put something out.
It's not a need to prove anything.
It's just my way of life.
Bette Midler

Good Music
There's only two ways to sum up music:
either it's good or it's bad.
If it's good you don't mess about it;
you just enjoy it.
Louis Armstrong

Healin' Music
I believe my music is the healin' music. I believe my music can make the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf and dumb hear and talk because it inspires and uplifts people.
It regenerates the ears, makes the liver quiver, the bladder splatter, and the knees freeze.
I'm not conceited, either.
Little Richard

Boundary Line
Music is your own experience,
your thoughts,
your wisdom.
If you don't live it,
It won't come out of your horn.
They teach you there is a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
Charlie Parker

Musical Ideas
Musical ideas pursue me
to the point of torture.
I cannot get rid of them,
they stand before me like a wall.
If it is an allegro that pursues me,
my pulse beats faster, I cannot sleep;
if an adagio, I find my pulse beating slowly.
My imagination plays upon me as if I were a keyboard.
Joseph Haydn

Kill your music
The best way to kill your music is to sit down every day and work at it. You got to sneak up on it and catch it when it's not looking.
Iggy Pop

Music Makers
We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea breakers,
and setting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.
Arthur O'Shaughnessy