A great pianist was once asked by an admirer, "How do you handle the notes as well as you do?" The artist replied, "The notes I handle no better than many pianists, but the pauses between the notes--ah, that is where the art resides!"
                                                               –Artur Schnabel.

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.
                                                               –Benny Green.

After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
                                                               –Aldous Huxley.

Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?
                                                               –Shakespeare.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.
                                                               –Paul Whiteman.

Most rock journalism is people who can not write interviewing people who can not talk.
                                                               –Frank Zappa.

Music expresses that which can not be said about that which it is impossible to be silent.
                                                               –Victor Hugo.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.
                                                               –Lawrence Durrell

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
                                                               –Berthold Auerbach.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.
                                                               –Frank Zappa.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
                                                               –H. L. Mencken.

The exercise of singing is delightful to nature, and good to preserve the health of man, It doth strengthen all parts of the breast, and doth open the pipes.
                                                               –William Byrd.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
                                                               –Thoreau.

There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
                                                               –Sir Thomas Beecham.

Today, music heralds the establishment of a society of repetition in which nothing will happen anymore.
                                                               –Jacque Attali.

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
                                                               –Stravinsky.

Why do we teach music? Not because we expect you to major in music. Not because we expect you to play and sing all your life. Not so you can relax. But so you will be human. So you will recognize beauty. So you will be sensitive. So you will have something to cling to. So you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good, in short, more life. Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live? That is why we teach music.
                                                               –Unknown.