Quotes by Music Critics

The good composer is slowly discovered the bad composer is slowly found out.
Ernest Newman
The good composer is slowly discovered the bad composer is slowly found out.
Ernest Newman
The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven Wagner Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.
Ernest Newman
I am convinced it is a mistake to find an artist human outside his work. If you cannot find him human in and through his work you are better not to know it when you come to formulate an opinion of his public value.
Kenneth Winters
Remember, there are more people in the world than yourself. Be modest! You have not yet invented nor thought anything which others have not thought or invented before. And should you really have done so, consider it a gift of heaven which you are to share with others.
Robert Schumann
It was a black and white day of frost, which crawled along the dark trees and outlined twig and branch. The air was misty, and distant objects assumed a mysterious importance. Slight sounds, too, suggested infinite activities to the mind.("A Tribute Of Souls")
Robert S. Hichens
What we spend, we lose. What we keep will be left for others. What we give away will be ours forever.
David McGee
My job is not to get between YOU and God. My job is to put your hand IN God's hand.
David McGee
The person who asks a lot of questions has room for their faith to grow.
David McGee
If somebody in your life doesn't think you are a fanatic, you are probably backslidden.
David McGee
We should be more concerned with reaching the lost than pampering the saved.
David McGee
Racism is not merely about individual chauvinism, prejudice, or bigotry. Ruth Glimore reminds us that it is about the ways different groups are 'vulnerable to premature death,' whether at the hands of the state or structures that kill.
Jeff Chang
Jesus paid a high price for your peace. Don't give it away.
David McGee
A large oak tree is just a little nut that refused to give up.
David McGee
On God's calendar, there are no ordinary days.
David McGee
Every source of blessing is a point of attack.
David McGee
What kind of a day was it? A day like all others, that alters and illuminates our times. And you were there.
Harvey Pekar
If we don't remember where we came from, we'll go back there.
David McGee
One day in 1948 or 1949, the Brentwood County Mart, a shopping complex in an upscale neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, was the scene of a slight disturbance that carried overtones of the most spectacular upheaval in twientieth-century music. Marta Feuchtwanger, wife of émigré novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, was examining grapefruit in the produce section when she heard a voice shouting German from the far end of the aisle. She looked up to see Arnold Schoenberg, the pioneer of atonal music and the codifier of twelve-tone composition, bearing down on her, with his bald pate and burning eyes. Decades later, in conversation with the writer Lawrence Weschler, Feuchtwanger could recall every detail of the encounter, including the weight of the grapefruit in her hand. “Lies, Frau Marta, lies!” Schoenberg was yelling. “You have to know, I never had syphilis!
Alex Ross
Every Inch of the Way is a great page turning adventure which is as close as you can get, without actually saddling up and pedalling yourself into the unknown. It takes real magic to turn a great adventure, into a great book. For one thing, most people can't relate to the mindset of the long distance cyclist and I found myself laughing along to Tom's thoughts and observations, wondering if they were in - jokes, shared by those who had seen the world at the speed of a bike, for example his relationship with Serbia's stray dogs! . But his anecdotes have a great balance of the cultures and places, as opposed to just inward reflections, so I am sure would be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in travel and human experience. A lovely story, written from the heart.
Mark Beaumont
Let your intimate friends be chosen from such as are better informed than yourself.
Robert Schumann
Some say that it is lack of imagination which makes men and women brutes. May it not be power of imagination? The interest of torturing is lessened, is almost lost, if we can not be the tortured as well as the torturer.
Robert S. Hichens
Nationalism and ethnic pride, in the long run, delay human development, and the misery they cause must be recognized. If enough people saw that , maybe we wouldn't have so many wars.
Harvey Pekar
The (extremely lavish set) was created by a transparency, a fine gauze, finely painted. According to the theatre accounts, it cost 241 ducats, 91 ducats more than Rossini was paid for the music.
Richard Osborne
To send light into the darkness of men's hearts--such is the duty of the artist.
Robert Schumann
The Christian life doesn't work because we are such great followers. It works because Christ is such a great Leader.
David McGee
All change begins with someone having a thought.
Paul Morley
Like almost all of Beefheart's recorded work, [Trout Mask Replica] was not even "ahead" of its time in 1969. Then and now, it stands outside time, trends, fads, hypes, the rise and fall of whole genres eclectic as walking Christmas trees, constituting a genre unto itself: truly, a musical Monolith if ever there was one.
Lester Bangs
Like almost all of Beefheart's recorded work, it was not even "ahead" of its time in 1969. Then and now, it stands outside time, trends, fads, hypes, the rise and fall of whole genres eclectic as walking Christmas trees, constituting a genre unto itself: truly, a musical Monolith if ever there was one.
Lester Bangs
In 1829 Rossini was at an age which has often proven critical in the lives of musicians, painters and writers. Lapses into silence far more complete than Rossini's, creative failures, suicides, and unanticipated deaths have been common in the middle to late 30s. As Charles Rosen has noted, 'It is the age when the most fluent composer begins to lose the ease of inspiration he once possessed, when even Mozart had to make sketches and to revise'.
Richard Osborne
The terms that Sforza Cesarini offered Rossini, 400 Roman Scudi, were not ungenerous, though it must have been galling for Rossini to see the Figaro, Luigi Zamboni, getting almost twice as much, and the Almaviva, Manuel Garcia, being offered three times the amount. Of the first-night cast, only the 'altro buffo', Bartolomeo Botticelli, who played Bartolo, and the 'seconda donna', Elisabetta Lowselet, who played Berta, were paid less than the composer.
Richard Osborne
Wagner thought Rossini unserious; Rossini thought Wagner 'lacked sun'. Wagner also became the butt of a phrase Rossini had used down the years to describe musicians about whom he had certain reservations - "He has some beautiful moments but some bad quarters of an hour!
Richard Osborne
Look deeply into life, and study it as diligently as the other arts and sciences.
Robert Schumann
the study of jurisprudence, by which I must earn my bread, has so withered and frozen the flowers of my fancy that they will never again seek the light. (To his Mother, November 11, 1829)
Robert Schumann
...there is a void in my guts which can only be filled by songs.
Jessica Hopper
Us girls deserve more than one song. We deserve more than one pledge of solidarity. We deserve better songs than any boy will ever write about us.
Jessica Hopper
If you're reading this book, there is probably an artist or band whose music you have an intense personal relationship with. I would also guess that this artist or band came into your life during a time when you were highly vulnerable. if this is the case, this artist or band might be the closest thing you had to a confidant. in fact, he, she, or it was better than a confidant, because his/her/its music articulated your own thoughts and feeling better than you ever could. This music elevated the raw materials of your life to the heights of art and poetry. It made you feel as if your personal experience was grander and more meaningful than it might otherwise have been. And naturally you attributed whatever that music was doing to your heart and brain to the people who made the music, and you came to believe that the qualities of the music were also true of the music's creators. "If this music understands me, then the people behind the music must also understand me," goes this line of thought.
Steven Hyden
My teacher, Ben Johnston, was convinced that our tuning is responsible for much of our cultural psychology, the fact that we are so geared toward progress and action and violence and so little attuned to introspection, contentment, and acquiescence. Equal temperament could be described as the musical equivalent to eating a lot of red meat and processed sugars and watching violent action films. The music doesn't turn your attention inward, it makes you want to go out and work off your nervous energy on something.
Kyle Gann
She's thinking that what she's been doing all these years isn't what she wants to do anymore. Sometimes music flows to her and from her, but sometimes it doesn't. Lately that happens more and more, and she can't seem to find what she had and what made her special. But she can't tell her father because he'd be so disappointed in her, so disappointed to find out she's not extraordinary after all.
Leila Cobo
They're events you remember all your life, like your first real orgasm. And the whole purpose of the absurd, mechanically persistent involvement with recorded music is the pursuit of that priceless moment. So it's not exactly that records might unhinge the mind, but rather that if anything is going to drive you up the wall it might as well be a record.
Lester Bangs
If, while at the piano, you attempt to form little melodies, that is very well; but if they come into your mind of themselves, when you are not practising, you may be still more pleased; for the internal organ of music is then roused in you. The fingers must do what the head desires; not the contrary.
Robert Schumann
if the main reason we listen to music in the first place is to hear passion expressed- as i've believed all my life-then what good is this music going to prove to be? what does that say about us? what are we confirming in ourselves by doting on art that is emotionally neutral? and, simultaneously, what in ourselves might we be destroying or at least keeping down?
Lester Bangs
It's not enough just to do those things anymore; what you must do instead if you want success on any large scale is either figure out a way of getting yourself associated in the audience's mind with their pieties and their sense of 'community,' i.e. ram it home that you're one of THEM; or, alternately, deck and bake yourself into an image configuration so blatant or outrageous that you become a culture myth.
Lester Bangs
Play always as if in the presence of a master.
Robert Schumann
The more you love music, the more music you love.
Tom Moon
When you play, never mind who listens to you.
Robert Schumann
My parents' work ethic amazed me. How could they put in such long hours, day after day?Part of the reason was to keep the family going - to keep me going. I realized that, although we had different values derived from different cultures and wouldn't agree on certain issues, they were good people, incredible people, and I loved and respected them.
Harvey Pekar
From a pound of iron, that costs little, a thousand watch-springs can be made, whose value becomes prodigious. The pound you have received from the Lord,--use it faithfully.
Robert Schumann
By means of industry and perseverance you will rise higher and higher.
Robert Schumann
For great changes in the human mind are terrible. As we realize them we realize the limitless possibilities of sinister deeds that lie hidden in every human being. A little child that loves a doll can become an old, crafty, secret murderer. How horrible! And perhaps it is still more horrible to think that, while the human envelope remains totally unchanged, every word of the letter within may become altered, and a message of peace fade into a sentence of death.
Robert S. Hichens
You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been produced at different periods.
Robert Schumann
Think it a vile habit to alter works of good composers, to omit parts of them, or to insert new-fashioned ornaments. This is the greatest insult you can offer to Art.
Robert Schumann
Without enthusiasm nothing great can be effected in art.
Robert Schumann
The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.
Lester Bangs
People of color are allowed, even required to perform, and, especially these days on issues of race, to edify as well. 'Here you are, now entertain us'. But are we allowed to lead?
Jeff Chang
...unlike Aretha, [Al Green's] only rival vocally, Al never sold himself short in the studio. Where the albums follow the vagaries of genius, the hits exploit Al's personal production line, every one a perfect soul record and a perfect pop record in whatever order suits your petty little values. Brashly feminine and seductively woman-friendly, he breaks free in a register that darts and floats and soars into falsetto with startling frequency and beguiling ease. He's so gorgeous, so sexy, so physically attractive that only masochists want to live without him.
Robert Christgau
She shuffled with her head bowed, her dark eyes drifting to avoid contact, and she screamed in bed at night. (Dark City Lights)
Jim Fusilli
A society without the authentic and vibrant influence of women is a society that is not fully alive. A culture lacking the vital creativity of women is disadvantaged. Without the bearing of women on world affairs, humanity's already tenuous grip on peace is made even less sure. When women are barred, whether by law, cultural prejudice, or political ideology, from developing their full potential and offering their unique gifts, it is an injustice to women themselves and to humanity as a whole.
Stephen Catanzarite
It's a strange grief… to die of nostalgia for something you you will never live.
Alessandro Baricco
I'll probably never produce a masterpiece, but so what? I feel I have a Sound aborning, which is my own, and that Sound if erratic is still my greatest pride, because I would rather write like a dancer shaking my ass to boogaloo inside my head, and perhaps reach only readers who like to use books to shake their asses, than to be or write for the man cloistered in a closet somewhere reading Aeschylus while this stupefying world careens crazily past his waxy windows toward its last raving sooty feedback pirouette.
Lester Bangs