Quotes About Performing Music

Quotes About Performing Music


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