H quotes

View Quote Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

View Quote Eduard Hanslick, quoted by Wolfgang Sandberger (1996) in the liner notes to the Juilliard String Quartet's Intimate Letters. Sony Classical SK 66840.

View Quote We must ask whether a cross-cultural musical universal is to be found in the music itself (either its structure or function) or the way in which music is made. By 'music-making,' I intend not only actual performance but also how music is heard, understood, even learned.

View Quote Dane Harwood (1976:522). "Universals in Music: A Perspective from Cognitive Psychology", Ethnomusicology 20, no. 3:521-33.

View Quote The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind change. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity.

View Quote Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game.

View Quote We consider classical music to be the epitome and quintessence of our culture, because it is that culture’s clearest, most significant gesture and expression. In this music we possess the heritage of classical antiquity and Christianity, a spirit of serenely cheerful and brave piety, a superbly chivalric morality. For in the final analysis every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behavior concentrated into a gesture.

View Quote Herman Hesse, Joseph Knecht in The Glass Bead Game, R. Winton, trans. (1990)

View Quote A chord is by no means an agglomeration of intervals. It is a new unit which, although dependent on the formative power of the single interval, is felt as being self-existent and as giving to the constituent intervals meanings and functions which they otherwise would not have.

View Quote Paul Hindemith (1952: 72). A Composer's World. Cambridge, Mass.

View Quote Elected Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

View Quote Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Habit of Perfection"

View Quote We can no longer maintain any distinction between music and discourse about music, between the supposed object of analysis and the terms of analysis.

View Quote Bruce Horner (1999). "Discourse". Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture. ISBN 0631212639.

View Quote Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

View Quote Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare (1864) Part I, Book II, Chapter IV [1]