Music

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

The song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.

As some to church repair,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpoints to hack post-horses.

The harp that once through Tara’s halls

For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense.

Of music Dr Johnson used to say that it was the only sensual pleasure without vice.

An exotic and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed.

What then is music? … It exists between thought and phenomenon, like a twilight medium, it stands between spirit and matter, related to and yet different from both; it is spirit, but spirit governed by time; it is matter, but matter that can manage without space.

On a tree by a river a little tom-tit

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—

There is music in the air.

Hey! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Music has charms to sooth a savage breast.

And ther he saugh, with ful avysement

With shrieking and squeaking

Piping down the valleys wild,

The immortal god of harmony.

There is nothing to it. You only have to hit the right notes at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

O what is that sound which so thrills the ear