"The grand tune is the only thing in music that the great public really understands."

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“I found it as alluring as a wayward woman and determined to tame it.”

“Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.”

“What can you do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about.”

“The musical equivalent of the towers of St Pancras Station”

“Too much counterpoint; what is worse, Protestant counterpoint.”

“A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.”

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"But officially Mantell had chased the planet Venus, metamorphosed later into a Skyhook balloon, and thus, alas, met his death. ...This Venus idea makes it very hard to understand a sighting at White S…"

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