Quotes On Music

For myself, I have always considered that in general it is more satisfactory to proceed by similarity rather than by contrast. Music thus gains strengths in the measure that it does not succumb to the seductions of variety. What it loses in questionable riches it gains in true solidarity.

from Poetics of Music:

… tonal elements become music by virtue of their being organized, and that such organization presupposes a conscious human act.

Since I myself was created I cannot help having the desire to create.

Tradition is entirely different from habit, even from an excellent habit, since habit is by definition an unconscious acquisition and tends to become mechanical, whereas tradition results from a conscious and deliberate acceptance. A real tradition is not the relic of a past that is irretrievably gone; it is a living force that animates and informs the present.

Far from implying the repetition of what has been, tradition presupposes the reality of what endures. It appears as an heirloom, a heritage that one receives on condition of making it bear fruit before passing it on to one’s descendants.