If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music whi...ch he hears, however measured or far away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"... You can hear the small buzz saws whine, the big saw Caterwaul to the hills around the village... As they both bite the wood. It's all our music. One ought as a good villager to like it. No doubt it has a sort of prosperous sound, And it's our life." "Yes, when it's not our death."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The band waked me with a serenade. How they improve! A fine band and what a life in a regiment! Their music is better than food an...d clothing to give spirit to the men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great challenge which faces us is to assure that, in our society of big-ness, we do not strangle the voice of creativity, that... the rules of the game do not come to overshadow its purpose, that the grand orchestration of society leaves ample room for the man who marches to the music of another drummer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My friends you want a speech, but I cannot make one at this time. I must have opportunity to think. Undue importance might be give...n to what I said. However, there is one thing I will do. You have a band with you. There's one piece of music I've always liked. Heretofore, it hasn't seemed the proper thing to use it in the North. But now by virtue of my prerogative as President and Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy, I declare it contraband of war and our lawful prize. I ask the band to play "Dixie."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo like popguns to these woods, and some waifs of martial music occasionally p...enetrate thus far. To me, away there in my bean-field at the other end of the town, the big guns sounded as if a puffball had burst; and when there was a military turnout of which I was ignorant, I have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some sort of itching and disease in the horizon, as if some eruption would break out there soon.... When there were several bands of musicians, it sounded as if all the village was a vast bellows, and all the buildings expanded and collapsed alternately with a din. But sometimes it was a really noble and inspiring strain that reached these woods, and the trumpet that sings of fame, and I felt as if I could spit a Mexican with a good relish,--for why should we always stand for trifles?--and looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry upon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
During the cattle drives, Texas cowboy music came into national significance. Its practical purpose is well known--it was used pri...marily to keep the herds quiet at night, for often a ballad sung loudly and continuously enough might prevent a stampede. However, the cowboy also sang because he liked to sing.... In this music of the range and trail is "the grayness of the prairies, the mournful minor note of a Texas norther, and a rhythm that fits the gait of the cowboy's pony."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact... that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »