An Encyclopedia of Quotations About Music
An Encyclopedia of Quotations About Music
Compiled by Nat Shapiro.
Published by Da Capo Press, 1981.
This is a 6" by 9" paperback running to 418 pages including the index of names and sources and the index of key words and phrases, plus a brief introduction.
This paperback edition is a reprint of the original 1978 book, which makes it a little moldy, considering how much music and talk about music there have been since then. Still, it's a nice collection of quotations about music, drawn roughly equally from general literature and the writings and sayings of composers and musicians.
The book is divided into eight parts with about 45 sub-parts. The eight main sections, with some sample subsections in parentheses, are:
- Creators and Components (Melody, Harmony and Rhythm; Composers and Composition; the Avant Garde)
- Exponents (Conductors and Conducting; Instruments and Instrumentalists; Concerts)
- Proponents and Opponents (Critics and Criticism; Musical Misanthopy)
- Lift Every Voice (Words and/with/for/to Music; The Wings of Song; Singing and Singers)
- The Universal Art (Emotions, Vapors and Dispositions; The Food of Love; The Lingering Melody; Solitude; Tones in Time; The Soul of a Nation; The Open-Air Art)
- Music for the Millions (Jazz; Blues and Blacks; Popular and Light; Folk; Dance)
- Metaphysics, Metaphor and Miscellany (The Music of the Spheres; Music as Metaphor; Proverbs, Aphorisms, Wordplay, and Assorted Musical Saws)
Here are a couple of random samples:
Nothing is so truly bounded and obedient to law as music, yet nothing so surely breaks all petty and narrow bonds.
- Henry David Thoreau
Journal 1854
Jazz may be thought of as a current that bubbled forth from a spring in the slums of New Orleans to become the main spring of the twentieth century.
- Henry Pleasants (1910- )
News summaries, December 30, 1955
Flute, n. A Variously perforated hollow stick intended for the punishment of sin, the minister of retribution being commonly a young man with straw-colored eyes and lean hair.
- Ambrose Bierce
The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary
Good singing is often wearisome.
French proverb, c. 1498
I can fancy a man who had led a perfectly commonplace life, hearing by chance some curious piece of music, and suddenly, discovering that his soul, without his being conscious of it, had passed through terrible experiences, and known fearful joys, or wild romantic loves, or great renunciations.
- Oscar Wilde
The Critic as Artist 1891
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