Music Critic

Quotes & Thinkers in Music Critic

45 thinkers

Sort:

Notable Thinkers

40+ of 45

Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy

1844–1900

"I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer."

270 quotes

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Literature

Age of Enlightenment

1749–1832

"Only mankind Can do the impossible: He can distinguish, He chooses and judges, He can give permanence To the moment."

"Closed societies are now the flimsiest of illusions, for all the outsiders are demanding in."

"Traditional philosophy’s claim to totality, culminating in the thesis that the real is rational, is indistinguishable from apologetics."

"If this person slept with your girlfriend, she would never be attractive to you again."

"Sonata form could not be defined until it was dead. Czerny claimed with pride around 1840 that he was the first to describe it, but then it was already part of history."

67 quotes

🇫🇷Pierre Schaeffer

Literature

musique concrète instrumentale

1910–1995

"Sound is the vocabulary of nature... noises are as well articulated as the words in a dictionary... Opposing the world of sound is the world of music."

"Music is the outward and audible signification of inward and spiritual realities."

"he entire country should man up. We are drowning in weenification and snowflakiness. Shall we grow a national pair?"

"a language which we speak and understand but cannot translate"

"The Pianoforte Sonatas of Beethoven must always be among the choicest possessions of all who love music and especially of those who make music their main object and study."

"I'd shut the whole world down just to tell you"

3 quotes

🇩🇪Joseph Martin Kraus

Music

1756–1792

"The symphony he wrote here in Vienna especially for me will be regarded as a masterpiece for centuries to come; believe me, there are few people who can compose something like that."

"Trump's skin is so thin it's a wonder his organs don't fall out."

"Sibelius justified the austerity of his old age by saying that while other composers were engaged in manufacturing cocktails, he offered the public pure cold water."

"I'm always intrigued at how few people understand that free speech encompasses a little more than the speech you like."

"The extravagant and ostentatious lifestyles that pass for charisma in a time when almost anybody talks about charisma but if you think about it there's precious little to be seen."

"In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of."

"I like to write about modern instincts that are in some way good. And also in some way dangerous."

4 quotes

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Music

1840–1893

"After the last notes of Gotterdammerung I felt as though I had been let out of prison."

"Zappa was not a protester or an activist. He was merely a man who used his brain."

"Open Letter to Ellen Willis" by Louis Proyect, PEN-L"

"The greatest work of the composer is often sublimation, that is, the deflection of energies, thoughts, occurrences, psychological and physical reactions, into socially constructive or creative channels."

"I have very strongly this feeling... that our everyday life is at one and the same time banal, overfamiliar, platitudinous and yet mysterious and extraordinary."

"You moralistic dog—admitting a hierarchy in which you are subordinate, purely that you may have subordinates; licking the boots of a superior, that you may have yours in turn licked by an underling."

"How much has to be explored and discarded before reaching the naked flesh of feeling."

"Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere if they are serious about this music...The is no valid motivation for it other than love– outlaw motivation in a profit-motivated society."

1 quotes

🇬🇧Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji

Music

1892–1988

"To the everlasting glory of those few men blessed and sanctified in the curses and execrations of those many whose praise is eternal damnation."

"So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it."

"Obsessive Memories," essay on memory and his father, Greil Gerstley, who died in World War II."

"I am writing Parsifal only for my wife — if I had to depend on the German spirit, I should have nothing more to say."

"The magic of music is so strong, getting stronger, it should break any shackle of another art."

"In future editions many of those who may die in the meantime will, of course, be added. All the same, it is hoped that this announcement will not start an immediate wave of suicide among singers and players."

"Rubber Rodeo has become not so much a joke on the conventions of cowboy pop as a reassessment on the urge to roam where no buffalo roam."

3 quotes

Also explore

🏺 Ancient →🏛️ Classical →⚔️ Medieval →🎨 Renaissance →