(no subject)
"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't next in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
-Harper Lee
"Every actor and musician has a text upon which to base his art, but he can treat the text in one of two ways...In music, this means asking how far the system of musical signs printed on the page can actually represent the music the composer heard in his head. If you believe these signs- the notes, the loud and soft markings, tempo indications- are an adequate language, then in performing the piece you concentrate on realizing in the sound what you, the performer, read. If you believe music cannot be adequately notated, then your task in the performance is to find what is missing from the printed phrase"
"My great sadness is the realization that the first ten minutes of every concert are lost to me, while I get accustomed all over again to being there. In these ten or fifteen minutes, I suffer agony, because even if it is a heavenly piece of music, I can't feel deeply about it, as I am still in the process of getting over my embarrassment and discomfort. When this short but oh so long time has run its miserable course, I am all right, but until then, I must submit meekly to slips of the fingers, and to a heart that beats, but not enough to obliterate me, which is what I want...I am nervous and apprehensive because I may not 'have it' that particular night. Because I feel the piece is bigger than me, so big I may never be able to even touch it, let alone be the master."
"A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me"
"I carry my thoughts about with me for a long time...before writing them down...once I have grasped a theme, I shall not forget it even years later. I change many things, discard others, and try again and again until I am satisfied; then, in my head...[the work] rises, it grows, I hear and see the image in front of me from every angle...and only the labor of writing it down remains...I turn my ideas into tones that resound, roar, and rage until at last they stand before me in the form of notes"
-Beethoven
"Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars... Beethoven embraced the universe with the power of his spirit...I do not climb so high. A long time ago I decided that my universe will be the soul and heart of man"
-Chopin
"Bach gave us God's Word. Mozart gave us God's laughter. Beethoven gave us God's fire. God gave us Music that we might pray without words."
"I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there... I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play every day."
-Harper Lee
"Every actor and musician has a text upon which to base his art, but he can treat the text in one of two ways...In music, this means asking how far the system of musical signs printed on the page can actually represent the music the composer heard in his head. If you believe these signs- the notes, the loud and soft markings, tempo indications- are an adequate language, then in performing the piece you concentrate on realizing in the sound what you, the performer, read. If you believe music cannot be adequately notated, then your task in the performance is to find what is missing from the printed phrase"
"My great sadness is the realization that the first ten minutes of every concert are lost to me, while I get accustomed all over again to being there. In these ten or fifteen minutes, I suffer agony, because even if it is a heavenly piece of music, I can't feel deeply about it, as I am still in the process of getting over my embarrassment and discomfort. When this short but oh so long time has run its miserable course, I am all right, but until then, I must submit meekly to slips of the fingers, and to a heart that beats, but not enough to obliterate me, which is what I want...I am nervous and apprehensive because I may not 'have it' that particular night. Because I feel the piece is bigger than me, so big I may never be able to even touch it, let alone be the master."
"A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me"
"I carry my thoughts about with me for a long time...before writing them down...once I have grasped a theme, I shall not forget it even years later. I change many things, discard others, and try again and again until I am satisfied; then, in my head...[the work] rises, it grows, I hear and see the image in front of me from every angle...and only the labor of writing it down remains...I turn my ideas into tones that resound, roar, and rage until at last they stand before me in the form of notes"
-Beethoven
"Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars... Beethoven embraced the universe with the power of his spirit...I do not climb so high. A long time ago I decided that my universe will be the soul and heart of man"
-Chopin
"Bach gave us God's Word. Mozart gave us God's laughter. Beethoven gave us God's fire. God gave us Music that we might pray without words."
"I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there... I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play every day."