A Quote by Ned Rorem

If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist. — © Ned Rorem
If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist.
My music must be an artistic reproduction of human speech in all its finest shades. That is, the sounds of human speech, as the external manifestations of thought and feeling must, without exaggeration or violence, become true, accurate music.
I believe in freedom of speech, and at the same time I think that sometimes it can be worth it to not say something. In my opinion there is a sort of limit to that freedom, but where that limit exactly lies is open for discussion. As soon as there is no longer any discussion possible, than it has reached its limits and therefore freedom of speech will no longer exist.
Just as typography is human speech translated into what can be read, so photography is the translation of reality into a readable image.
It is my conviction that becoming economically and socially vulnerable puts you at the mercy of people surrounding you. It is as if you no longer exist as a human being and are no longer worthy of respect.
I know myself - I cannot just play a cliche. It has to be a character; it has to be written with the complexity of the human being behind. Could be bad, could be good, could be someone we would hate, but still, I need a reason for that influence, and I need to understand why.
The language in New Mexico is very different. At first when you hear the speech here, you don't really know what to do with it, but then I just went with it, because as a writer as well as a translator I do believe that translated words are not different names for the same thing. They're different names for different things. I tried to stay as true as I could, so I used Ruben Cobos' dictionary of Southwestern Spanish, and when I went into Spanish I never assumed the word I would use would be the word a nuevomexicano would use.
Apart from pleasure, beauty also kindles imagination, hope and encouragement. If beauty ceased to exist, we would, in a very real sense, cease to exist--for we would be no longer who we are.
There are tons of people who are late to trends by nature and adopt a trend after it's no longer in fashion. They exist in mutual funds. They exist in clothes. They exist in cars. They exist in lifestyles.
If all meanings could be adequately expressed by words, the arts of painting and music would not exist.
Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless-nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.
There is no reason products and services could not be swapped directly by consumers and producers through a system of direct exchange – essentially a massive barter economy. All it requires is some commonly used unit of account and adequate computing power to make sure all transactions could be settled immediately. People would pay each other electronically, without the payment being routed through anything that we would currently recognize as a bank. Central banks in their present form would no longer exist – nor would money.
My interest in making music has been to create something that does not exist that I would like to listen to. I wanted to hear music that had not yet happened, by putting together things that suggested a new thing which did not yet exist.
President Obama's farewell speech soared, towered, dragged. True, it was longer than Reagan's, Clinton's and GWB's speeches combined. If it got any longer, it would have qualified as a third term.
The need to make music, and to listen to it, is universally expressed by human beings. I cannot imagine, even in our most primitive times, the emergence of talented painters to make cave paintings without there having been, near at hand, equally creative people making song. It is, like speech, a dominant aspect of human biology.
When my works are being translated, I always get this question from my translators: Up or down? Which means, should it sound biblical and highbrow, or should we take it all down to sound colloquial? In Hebrew, it's both all the time. People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech.
You'll get this kind of psychological relationship to the imagery of the music, but that idea is translated to iPhone apps. It's translated to the small, you know, kind of icons on your computer. You name it.
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