A Quote by Dmitri Shostakovich

In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Quote Topics

About Any Important Less Long Long Run Music Run Than Words

Quote Author

Dmitri Shostakovich
Russian - Composer
September 25, 1906 - August 9, 1975

I write music, it’s performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn’t need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Popular music of the last 50 years has failed to keep in step with advances in musical theater, namely Stephen Sondheim. But the two have grown apart so that popular music is based more than ever on a rhythmic grid that is irrelevant in musical theater. In popular music, words matter less and less. Especially now that it's so international, the fewer words the better. While theater music becomes more and more confined to a few blocks in midtown.

Stephin Merritt

Words and music equally important. But the way to get what I'm looking for is different in each case. I have something specific I'm hoping for with the words and the music, and the way to get the words the way I like them is to take a long time, and the way to get the music I like it is to not let me or anyone else get in the way of it.

Todd Snider

The music is an important and crucial part to an animated film. You don't think about it, but you can watch Tom and Jerry with no words, for hours, and the music dictates the emotion and where the story is going and how you're supposed to feel. Everything is in the music.

Rihanna

One of the big mysteries of music is, if you take music without words, it means something to us because we know it's about something. It's about something important humanly, but since there are no words, nobody knows what it's about.

Tod Machover

The music goes into people in a totally different way than words. There's air, there's the sound of words, there's touch, there's music. All of those things have a really distinct way of meeting and entering people's bodies and souls. It's the most beautiful part about humans; that we make music.

Mirah

Everyone loves to run with music in their ears, but when the music becomes adaptive, the music plays a more important role in the experience.

Lars Rasmussen

I guess hip-hop has been closer to the pulse of the streets than any music we've had in a long time. It's sociology as well as music, which is in keeping with the tradition of black music in America.

Quincy Jones

Walt Disney was a story man, and he knew that we were thinking story. That's why he dug us so much and he hired us to work for him. We always thought about the story. That was more important than any words and any music. That's all it's about.

Richard M. Sherman

Music and language are a vital element. We, as actors and directors, offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.

Kenneth Branagh

Music is important. It says things you heart can't say any other way, and in a language everyone speaks. Music crosses borders, turns smiles into frowns, and vice versa. These observations are shared with a hope: that, when schools cut back on music classes, they really think about what they're doing - and don't take music for granted.

Dan Rather

Well, one is inspired by the whole of life, one's own and somebody else's. You know how sometimes you hear great music, and music is completely untranslatable into words, into any words. A certain tension that is born when one listens to music could aid you in expressing something absolutely different.

Wislawa Szymborska

Music is a language of emotion. I'm passionate about it because I think it's the most direct way to connect to the things that are ineffable. Words just aren't necessary a good enough opportunity to express. Words are maybe less than accessible at expressing.

Adrian Grenier

I want less and less control with music. Just playing music without any idea of composition or writing.

Yann Tiersen

The Rolling Stones were an inkling towards an appreciation of the unity of music, dance and words. Any of the black R&B people who had a stage show that involved dancing, music and words did the same thing, except that I thought Jagger's words were good, his music was good and his dancing was good. I spoke to him about Blake and tried to get him to sing [William] Blake's The Grey Monk, to use his words as lyrics. He didn't do it. In the end, I did it myself.