Thanks again to Chris Case and the Earthlingz group
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/earthlingz/)


ON MUSIC

>The universe is more like music than matter.
-Donald Andrews

>Music is life's only true magic, treat it with all the respect that
it
deserves.
-Bruce Swedien

>When you read music, there is a part of your creativity that shuts
down. It's like learning to paint with coloring books. It's like
coloring within the lines - you don't take off. When you think about
it
what music notes or a coloring book does is stifles creativity.
-David Lynch

>It is the culture-condition mind rather than the ears that do the
listening today.
>No music is totally "pure" and the vitality of a tradition can be
measured by its ability to integrate new contributions.
>If western musicians had to rely on their ears instead of their eyes
to
create music, where would it be today and in what form?
>Within music lies all the wonders and keys to the miracles of life ?
natural and spiritual. Music can facilitate the process of change and
growth.
-Ted Andrews

>Real music is not for wealth, not for honors or even the joys of the
mind…but is a path for realization and salvation.
-Ali Akbar Khan

>True knowledge of sound carries with it great power. It allows one to
travel without moving.
-Joska Soos

>Never before in the Western world have so many new instruments been
devised and constructed as today. Only a few copies of each prototype
are made are made in most cases, and in many instances there is only
the
original. Musicians make such instruments for themselves--and watch
over
them like a precious secret. Just asthe masters of Asia have done for
centuries--however, it is important to stress that the young people
who
behave similarly in the West are not imitating Asian customs. The
initiative was entirely theirs. In that respect too the instruments
they
build and play are also becoming part of the current of world music.
-Joachim-Ernst Berendt

>That which cannot be expressed otherwise can only be told through
music. A thought, which seems commonplace in its analysis, acquires a
deeper sense in music.
-Tagore

>Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind
the mind is meditation. Meditation returns you to the source. And the
source of all is sound.
-Kabir

>Music has eloquence of expression, greater than any other art.
>The art of music is infinite yet complete in itself.
-Tansen

>Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom or philosophy.
-Beethoven

>Mathematicians are able to break down into measure and figure what
musicians do intuitively.
>The art of music is endowed with a supernatural origin and a divine
purpose, more so than any other art.
-Liebniz

>Folk music is the "original melody" of man; it is the "musical
mirror"
of the world.
-Nietzsche

>The fact that the "world is sound" isn't just a widespread myth or
legend. It is confirmed in the established findings of fundamental
harmonic research and many other disciplines. We have found the
world's
tonal character confirmed in DNA genes and electron spins, in the
solar
wind and geomagnetism, in the weather and in the "song" of flowers and
plants.
>Ever since the time of his incarnation, man has progressively lost
his
original spiritual perception. This has worked to divorce music and
language from the natural harmonies and rhythms, which were and remain
the primordial condition of all things.
-Jocelyn Godwin

>The characteristic healing power of music has been increasingly
crippled in recent times, so that many have lost the desire even to
listen to music, owing to the sheer, strident noise of the era of
extreme materialism.
-Jocelyn Godwin

>It was probably the introduction of tempered tuning in the 18th
century
that resulted in ever-greater atrophy of awareness of overtones in
Western music. That was inevitable because tempered tuning amounts to
negation of natural tuning, which is postulated in every single note
by
way of the accompanying overtone series. It is almost as if a piece
played in tempered tuning--and thus virtually all Western
music--insists
on correcting nature. Not a single note in such a piece is heard in
its
natural relationships--apart from the octave itself. Man's belief that
he can do things better reigns.
-Joachim-Ernst Berendt

>In Eastern music, rich in overtones, the "system" creates the tones,
whereas in Western music it is the notes that establish the system.
-Joachim-Ernst Berendt

>Music is the archetype of the cosmic order, and as such the most
genuine of a world restored, but this holds true only so long as it
has
not fallen victim to a chaotic way of thinking.
-Jocelyn Godwin

>The more richly and consciously a music is endowed with overtones,
the
more timeless it is. The most timeless music on the planet comes from
the great Indian classical tradition, which also disposes over the
most
differentiated awareness of harmonics.
>O music, In your depths we deposit our hearts and souls. Thou hast
taught us to see with our ears and hear with our hearts.
-Kahil Gibran

>Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the
agitations
of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents
God has given us.
-Martin Luther

>Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
>Speech is man's most confused and egocentric expression, his most
orderly and magnanimous utterance is music.
-Ned Rorem

>It is music's lofty mission to shed light on the depths of the human
heart.
-Robert Schumann

>Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be
described in words with such difficulty,are directly conveyed to man
in
music, and in that is its power and significance.
-Leo Tolstoy

>Which of these two powers, love or music, can elevate man to the
sublimest heights? Why separate them? They are the two wings of the
soul.
-Hector Berlioz

>Wouldst thou know if a people be well governed, or if its laws be
good
or bad, examine the music it practices.
-Confucius

>As the music is, so are the people of the country.
-Turkish proverb

>Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the
mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness and life to
everything. Fine music is the essence of order and leads to all that
is
just and good, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless
dazzling,
passionate and eternal form.
-Plato

>Music is the soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.
-Ludwig von Beethoven

>Music should go right through you, leave some of itself inside you
and
take some of you with it when it leaves.
>See deep enough and you see musically, the heart of nature being
everywhere music, if you can only reach it.
-Thomas Carlyle

>Music can exist only if it reflects the inner life of humanity, not
the
outer life of its technology.
-Alec Wilder

>All true and deeply felt music, whether secular or sacred, has its
home
on the heights where art and religion dwell.
-Albert Schweitzer

>The rotation of the universe and the motion of the planets could
neither begin nor continue without music...for everything is ordered
by
God according to the laws of harmony.
-Plutarch

>There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in
the
spacing of the spheres.
-Pythagoras

>Music and religion are as intimately related as poetry and love. The
deepest emotions require for their civilized expression the most
emotional of the arts.
-Will Durant

>What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.
-Gustav Mahler

>After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the
inexpressible, is music.
-Aldous Huxley

>Music is the outward and audible signification of inward and
spiritual
realities.
>Music is said to be the speech of angels, in fact, nothing among the
utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near
to
the infinite.
-Thomas Carlyle


ON COMPOSING

Ceaseless work, analysis, reflection, writing much, endless
self-correction, that is my secret.
-J.S. Bach

Music is glorious in its own right; why should it accept the slavery
of
words? Music begins where words end. The inexplicable is the domain of
music. It can say what words cannot, and so the less the words disturb
the song, the better.
-Tagore

>It is the duty of the composer to serve his fellow man, to beautify
human life and point the way to a radiant future. Such is the
immutable
code of the artist as I see it.
-Sergei Prokofiev

>A poet always has too many words in his vocabulary, a painter too
many
colors on his palette, a musician too many notes on his keyboard.
-Jean Cocteau

>We hide ourselves in our music to reveal ourselves.
-Jim Morrison

>The sacredness of church music, the joyfulness and soulfulness of
folksongs are the two pivots around which revolve true music.
>A nation creates music--the composer only arranges it.
-Bela Bartok

>I regard all popular music as irrelevant in the sense that people in
200 years won't be listening to what is being written and played
today.
I think they will be listening to Beethoven. That's one of the
reasons I
don't take myself seriously.
-Elton John

>It is proportion that beautifies everything, the whole universe
consists of it, and music is measured by it.
-Orlando Gibbons

>Originality is the art of concealing your source.
>You must have the composition in your head, not your head in the
composition.
>The unconscious is the womb of all musical creation; all masterpieces
are born there.
>The value of a composer's work resides in the music itself, and not
in
how frequently it is played, how many honors its composer has won, or
how much critical acclaim has been received.
>A creative artist works on his next composition because he is not
satisfied with his previous one. When he loses a critical attitude
towards his own work, he ceases to be an artist.
>The composer joins heaven and earth with threads of sound.
>Do things, act. Make a list of the music you love, then learn it by
heart. And when you are writing music of your own, write it as you
hear
it inside and never strain to avoid the obvious.
-Nadia Boulanger



ON PERFORMING

>The secret of effortless control is balance - continuous adjustment
of
continuous change. Like learning to ride a bike, using less and less
means to control greater and greater power.
-Stephen Nachmanovitch

>The real authenticity we recognize is when the person is totally
involved. If the art is created with the whole person, then the work
will come out whole.
-Stephen Nachmanovitch

>The three ingredients for good music are pitch, passion and pocket.
-Ed Seay

>It is the finesse of the nuances and details that determines the
quality of an interpretation.
Western musicians believe that the fundamental note is almost all that
counts, so it occupies virtually all their attention. They are of the
opinion that it "makes" the music. Eastern musicians have other
experiences with their instruments. For them the "real" music derives
from the overtones rather than the primary notes. The primary notes
are
only a tool, an extension of the instrument employed in this craft. In
the view of Eastern musicians, anyone who remains at the level of the
primary note, does not get beyond the admittently important technical
aspects of music making.
-Joachim-Ernst Berendt

>The artist's mission in life is not to selfishly accumulate a lot of
money by cheap trickery, but to use, in the finest manner of which he
is
capable, the rare gifts God has entrusted to him.
-John Garth

>In musicmaking time and again mention is made of: listening,
perceiving, taking one's time, being attentive, observing the inner
aspects of what's happening, allowing things to unfold without
interfering, and being conscious--in other words, factors that are
also
important in meditation.
-Joachim-Ernst Berendt

>High concentration brings unawareness and thus spontaneity.
>Freedom in music is the liberty to become ever more perfectly what
essentially you are.
>Maintain your focus, live in your ears, and bring all energies to
hearing.
-Traditional East Indian Teaching

>Freedom for an artist is to be responsible to integrity, to honor, to
the God-given destiny of his own soul. What does it profit a man to
gain
wealth and fame and intellectual ballyhoo, if he looses his own soul?
-Merrill Root

>Limitation creates form.
-Krishnamurti

>Only the flint of man's soul can strike fire in music.
-Ludwig von Beethoven

>The piece of music is worked out by the composer, but it is the
performance which we enjoy. Thus the active and emotional principle in
music occurs in the art of reproduction, which draws the eclectic
spark
from God and directs it towards the listener.
>Don't play the notes. Play the meaning of the notes.
-Pablo Casals

>Music is the one thing in which there is no use trying to deceive
others or make false pretenses.
-Confucius

>I think the main thing a musician would like to do is to give a
picture
to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in
the universe.
-John Coltrane

>Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you
don't
live it, it won't come out of your horn.
-Charlie Parker

>Risk is a crucial element of communication through music. Just as
truly
creative musicians must be willing to be open, to examine their inner
life, to throw aside familiar comforts and plunge into the unknown, so
they must take risks during performance.
>If there is to be communication with the listener, the musician's
doors
leading inward must stay open. Through this opening, the listener is
invited into the reality of the musician. This involves risk for the
performer. The inner world of the musician, the creative fount, is
personal and sacred.
>In a performance setting, there can be no monologues. Every note,
every
breath, each moment sends messages between musician and listener. To
ignore this two-way flow of feeling and meaning is to relinquish
artistry for ego-gratification.
>Competition is for horses, not artists.
-Bela Bartok

>We can never exhaust the multiplicity of nuances and subtleties,
which
make the charm of music. How can we expect to produce a vital
performance if we don't recreate the work everytime? Every year the
leaves of the trees reappear with the spring but they are different
every time.
-Pablo Casals

>A musician just has to learn for himself, just by playing and
listening. There is no one who can write down the feeling you have to
have. That's from inside yourself. The music has to let you be, you've
got to stay free inside it.
>An abundance of technique should not be a means to an end but a way
to
allow the heart to expand freely.
>Notation, the writing out of compositions, is primarily an ingenious
expedient for catching an inspiration, with the purpose of exploiting
it
later. But notation is to improvisation as the portrait to the living
model. It is up to the interpreter to resolve the rigidity of the
signs
into the emotion. The heart of a melody can never be put down on
paper.
-Pablo Casals

>The written note is like a straightjacket, whereas music, like life
itself, is constant movement, continuous spontaneity, free from any
restrictions.
>The musician must bring to the performance the utter confidence in
the
ability of the spirit to reach out to the souls of the audience. This
faith may be the most important quality the musician can contribute to
the
performance. Without it, even the most technically adroit will fail to
fulfill the role of music as divine communicator. The ego, that
self-hoping for acclaim, must be relinquished at this time. While it
has
been a motivating force in propelling one toward certain musical
goals,
at the moment of performance, the ego must be set aside so that the
spirit may be heard.
>Your playing must have conviction. It should show the measure of your
belief in what you know to be true, to the point where you would stake
your life on it. The inner fire must always show through. Play from
the
inside out; your sound should stem from the conviction of your soul.
This is what makes vital music.
-Philip Toshio Sudo


ON IMPROVISATION

>Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
-Miles Davis

>Improvising is the most natural and widespread form of music making.
Up
until the last century, it was integral even to our literate musical
tradition in the West.
-Stephen Nachmanovitch

>Trying to realize the essence of creating music by using dots on a
page
is no more possible than realizing the essence of painting by using
coloring books.
>Many western musicians are fabulously skilled at playing black dots
on
a printed page, but mystified by how the dots got there in the first
place and apprehensive of playing without dots. Music theory does not
help here; it teaches rules of the grammar, but not what to say. The
real story of improvisation is spontaneous expression, and is
therefore
a spiritual and a psychological story rather than a story about the
technique.
-Stephen Nachmanovitch

>Improvisation, it is a mystery. You can write a book about it, but by
the end no one still knows what it is. When I improvise and I'm in
good
form, I'm like somebody half sleeping. I even forget that there are
people in front of me. Great improvisers are like priests, they are
thinking only of their God.
-Stephane Grappelli

>The fruits of improvising may flower spontaneously, but it arises
from
soil that we have prepared, fertilized, and tended in the faith that
it
will ripen in nature's own time.
-Stephen Nachmanovitch

>The primary function of improvisation is to be expressive and
emotional; to improvise, one must be in a certain state, and at the
same
time, improvisation, by inducing surprise and novelty, provides the
interpreter with a special emotion that is perceived as the effect of
a
transcendental inspiration.
-Dariush Safvat

>Composing is the "ego-trip par excellence". The musical activity most
diametrically opposed to composing is improvising. We know that there
are some cultures where the composer dominates--above all in Western
music and others where the improviser rules, as almost everywhere else
in the world. However, both improvisers and composers exist in almost
all cultures, and there are borderline cases where it is often not
possible to determine whether something has been composed or is being
improvised. In most cases it turns out that what was originally
improvised has been repeated so often over the course of time that it
has taken on the character of something composed even though it is not
written down.
-Joachim-Ernst Berendt

>The joy in improvising while singing and playing is evident in almost
all phases of music history. It is always a
powerful force in the creation of new forms and every historical study
that confines itself to the practical and theoretical sources that
have
come down to us in writing or in print, without taking into account
the
improvisational element in living musical practice, must of necessity
present an incomplete, indeed a distorted picture. For there is
scarcely
a single field in music that has remained unaffected by improvisation,
scarcely a single musical technique or form of composition that did
not
originate in improvisatory practice or was not essentially influenced
by
it. The whole history of the development of music is accompanied by
manifestations of the drive to improvise.
-E.T. Ferand

>The first challenge of an improvising artist is to unify the diverse
response of an audience so that it becomes a part of the creation.
This
co-creation exists in a timeless area of subconscious communication
where theimproviser becomes the articulate voice of the group. The
compassion of this inspired moment of unity is the reason for
improvised
music.
-Dave Brubeck

>Improvisation is the only artform in which the same note can be
played
night after night but differently each time. It is the hidden things,
the subconscious that lets you know you feel this, you play this.
-Ornette Coleman

>It is a truism, that many of the recorded improvised masterpieces are
of a technical complexity, which would be quite beyond the ability of
their creators to play them, where they faced with the notes written
out
as a composition.
-Benny Green

>Improvisation is not the expression of accident but rather of the
accumulated yearnings, dreams and wisdom of our very soul.
-Yehudi Menuhin

ON PRACTICING

When we explode the artificial categories of exercise and real music,
each tone we play is at once an exploration of technique and a full
expression of spirit.
-Stephen Nachmanovitch

>Don't mistake activity for achievement. Business does not equal
productiveness.
>Let the time you spend with art flow through three natural phases:
invocation... work...gratitude.
-Stephen Nachmanovitch

>Acquiring a technique in the world of music is a much misunderstood
term. If there is a technique at all, it is the drawing out and
integrating of all parts of the person. One needs imagination with
clarity, drive with sensitivity.
-Herbert Whone

>To do anything artistically you have to acquire technique, but create
through your technique and not with it.
Stephen Nachmanovitch

>Patience is the key to learning music. It requires time to take root
in
the soul before it can blossom. There is no rushing nature.
-Nancy Lesh

>What counts is not the number of hours you put in, but how much you
put
in the hours.
>We think of practice as an activity done in a special context to
prepare for performance or the "real thing." But if we split practice
from the real thing, neither of them will be very real.
-Stephen Nachmanovitch

>Some people succeed because they are destined to, but most people
succeed because they are determined to.
>Concentrate on your task.
-Gandhi

>If we do not strive for inner perfection, we will remain what we are
now, talking animals. The perfect man, the complete man, lies within
each of us.
>Singing instrumental music is most important because, while you play
an
instrument, you are singing through the instrument...actually, you are
singing inside.
-Ali Akbar Khan

>Intensify your path, immerse yourself in sound.
-Joska Soos

>The difference between good and great is consistency.
-ESPN

>The start of every true advance must be accompanied by a readiness
for
sacrifice and involvement. In addition, one must also have the
capacity
fully and willingly to acknowledge something greater than oneself.
-Marius Schneider

>Though it is good to start your study of an instrument with a
classically trained musician, because of their attention to detail and
desire for purity of sound, at a certain point you need to move away,
because their obsession with "perfection" is life threatening to the
music.
>Whoever learns by listening, mainly playing his own music, and doing
without notation (or at most making reluctant and incomplete use of
its
possibilities), leaves music where it belongs: In time where listening
is the prime sense. Whoever learns a piece of music by reading it,
principally playing the music of others and
perfecting notation to an ever greater extent, transports music into
an
ultimately alien dimension: Into space whose cardinal sense is seeing.
-Joachim-Ernst Berendt

Sarasate, the great Spanish violinist of the last century, was once
called a genius by a famous critic. In reply to this, Sarasate shook
his
head and snorted: "Genius! For thirty-seven years I have practiced 14
hours a day, and now they call me a genius."

>Perfect your art in the wee hours of the morning, when all is still.
-Nicolas Roerich

>Teaching music is not my main purpose. I want to make good citizens.
If
children hear fine music from the day of their birth and learn to play
it, they develop sensitivity, discipline and endurance. They get a
beautiful heart.
-Shinichi Suzuki

>The question is whether a noble song is produced by nature or by
knowledge. I neither believe in mere labor being of avail without a
rich
vein of talent, nor in natural ability which is not educated.
-Horace (65 - 8 B.C.)

>Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for
music.

-Sergei Rachmaninoff

>Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because
rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul.
-Plato

>Practice in minute detail until every note is imbued with internal
life
and has taken its place in the overall design.
-Pablo Casals

>By concentrating on precision, one arrives at technique, but by
concentrating on technique one does not arrive at precision.
>Many people say that too much study kills spontaneity in music, but
although study may kill a small talent, it is a must to develop a big
one.
-George Gershwin

>Repetition is the mother of talent.
>Technique is the ability to lay open the basic sense of a great work
of
art, to make it clear.
>The music teacher came twice a week to bridge the awful gap between
Dorothy and Chopin.
-George Ade




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