...these little girls spoke of going to one school or the other later on, of perhaps they would decide not to practice their music... that day, or see if they could put off their dancing lesson till another hour. Things seemed to happen with them, sometimes one way, sometimes another, while with me there was a definite aim, and things just had to happen at a certain time. My one aim was to do a thing well, and to excel if possible. This outside life, where things seemed to go on without apparent necessity, held me in thrall.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 »
If music and sweet poetry agree, As they must needs (the sister and the brother),... Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me, Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which ba...nishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation, bei...ng absolutely necessary to excel in either; which, in my opinion, is by no means the case of music, though called a liberal art, and now in Italy placed even above the other two--a proof of the decline of that country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »