Music has often been compared with language itself, and the comparison is quite legitimate. While it combines easily with actual l...anguage, it also speaks a language of its own, which it has become a platitude to call universal. To understand the significance of the organizing factors of rhythm, melody, harmony, tone color and form, the analogy of a familiar language is helpful. Music has its own alphabet of only seven letters, as compared with the twenty-six of the English alphabet. Each of these letters represents a note, and just as certain letters are complete words in themselves, so certain notes may stand alone, with the force of a whole word. Generally, however, a note of music implies a certain harmony, and in most modern music the notes take the form of actual chords. So it may be said that a chord in music is analogous to a word in language. Several words form a phrase, and several phrases a complete sentence, and the same thing is true in music. Measured music corresponds to poetry, while the old unmeasured plain-song might be compared with prose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't know how long it has been since my ear has been free from the roll of a drum. It is the music I sleep by, and I love it....... I shall remain here while anyone remains, and do whatever comes to my hand. I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it, and while our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the Hatter [said], tossing his head contemptuously. "I dare say you never even spoke to Time!" "Perhaps not," Alice cauti...ously replied; "but I know I have to beat time when I learn music." "Ah! That accounts for it," said the Hatter. "He wo'n't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. for instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just in time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half past one, time for dinner!" I rarely disobeyed Daddy, both because of my respect for him and because I knew that punishment for my transgressions would be certain and sometimes severe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it a...in't music, it's close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For do but note a wild and wanton herd Or race of youthful and unhandled colts... Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud, Which is the hot condition of their blood; If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, Or any air of music touch their ears, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze By the sweet power of music.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 »
Their manners, speech, dress, friendships,--the freshness and candor of their physiognomy--the picturesque looseness of their carr...iage--their deathless attachment to freedom--their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean--the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states--the fierceness of their roused resentment--their curiosity and welcome of novelty--their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy--their susceptibility to a slight--the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors--the fluency of their speech--their delight in music, a sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul--their good temper and open-handedness--the terrible significance of their elections, the President's taking off his hat to them, not they to him--these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.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 »