Top 1200 Bach's Music Quotes & Sayings

I grew up on Bach and Beethoven and now I'm listening to more modern composers who I can't even name. But since I'm constantly doing music, it's difficult to have that quality time to listen to music and do classical stuff. That's the only reason I'm thinking of going on.

Has it struck you that the music which is regarded as the most sublime in western civilization, which is the music of Bach, is called baroque?

When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.

I grew up on Bach and Beethoven, and now I'm listening to more modern composers who I can't even name. But since I'm constantly doing music, it's difficult to have that quality time to listen to music and do classical stuff.

The miracle of Bach has not appeared in any other art. To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervour, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine; such is Bach, the greatest and purest moment in music of all time.

Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.

In Bach, the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God.

I think in Baroque music, especially in the case of Bach, what really transformed Bach's musical language, what changed it for him was hearing Vivaldi, hearing the sort of manipulation of small cells of information and patterns in order to generate sort of huge blocks of harmony.

I think of music a lot when I paint. The theme of it to a degree is music. So instead of literally putting in music or literally putting in a musical instrument, I use only a hint of the instrument, but the brocaded pattern is like a line of Bach because of its order and the leaves going up are like passages from Vivaldi, and the emphasis on drapery is where the sound comes.

I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.

Yes, I mean like you know, having studied with Yehudi Menuhin that is like some direct route into Bach, because he was one of the foremost interpreters of Bach for the violin.

Music always stimulates my imagination. When I'm writing I usually have some Baroque music on low in the background chamber music by Bach, Telemann, and the like.

You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is!

I do not think that music keeps evolving. It evolved through Bach; since then, in my humble opinion, all the innovations added nothing.

The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.

I played a lot of Bach's partitas and sonatas; I like the way that Bach was abstracting already from these dance forms.

When we play an unaccompanied Bach suite we may compare ourselves to an actor in Shakespeare's day, creating scenery which did not exist at all, through the power of declamation and suggestion. So in Bach. There is but one voice -- and many voices have to be suggested.

I can find something between sight and hearing and I can produce a fugue in colors as Bach has done in music.

You don't see the European classical musicians allowing the music of Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven to become extinct. That music has gone on for centuries and centuries. We have the same obligation. Why do we have to become so 'hip' that we can say, 'Bebop is square,' or "New Orleans is square'? This, to me, is a shame.

If somebody says, 'Well, what are your favorite composers?' really, what they are saying is, 'What are your favorite composers apart from Bach?' Because obviously, Bach is your favorite composer if you are involved in music at all.

I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner.

I had three older sisters whose record collections I borrowed, so I was listening to The Velvet Underground as well as Bach and brass band music.

There is nothing like a Bach fugue to remove me from a discordant moment... only Bach hold up fresh and strong after repeated playing. I can always return to Bach when the other records weary me.

If all the music written since Bach's time should be lost, it could be reconstructed on the foundation which Bach laid.

I come from a family in which music was important, especially German music - from I come from a family in which music was important, especially German music - from Johann Sebastian Bach to Ludwig van Beethoven. I played a lot of piano, mostly Bach. I really loved Glenn Gould's interpretations. to Beethoven. I played a lot of piano, mostly Bach. I really loved Glenn Gould's interpretations.

The music of Bach is so timeless, so fulfilling. You don't feel like you have to be in front of it. The music has everything, and you are there to find the balance when you conduct. You don't have to give too much of your individuality. It's Bach, so it's dangerous to get in the way.

And it totally has transformed my relationship with someone like, say, Bach. You know, Bach is born 330 years ago but, you know, gosh, he really is alive.

Some movies work really well with music from Bach or Mahler that existed long before the film, so music has its own autonomy.

I listen to lots of music, especially Bach, opera (all periods), German lieder, chamber music, and rock, old and new. I can't listen to music while I write. It's too absorbing.

Some months ago, while I was preparing a new work, I told a young cinema executive my intention of including in a soundtrack two themes from Bach. But when he asked me which has been the last hit from that Bach?, then I knew that I had no longer place in cinema.

I think that Bach has a very nice sound on the lute. But I find that what I want to do with Bach is best revealed on the guitar.

You have to open the music, so to speak, and see what's behind the notes because the notes are the same whether it is the music of Bach or someone else.

I like classical music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and I adore Bach above all.

Perhaps the safest thing to do at the outset, if technology permits, is to send music. This language may be the best we have for explaining what we are like to others in space, with least ambiguity. I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course, but it is surely excusable to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.

I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach.

Bach is a colossus of Rhodes, beneath whom all musicians pass and will continue to pass. Mozart is the most beautiful, Rossini the most brilliant, but Bach is the most comprehensive: he has said all there is to say.

A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That's how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it.

Whenever you study composition you inevitably encounter Bach right off the bat. You can't get across the room without running into him and the other greats. Analyzing Bach absolutely influenced my jazz playing.

I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop.

The music of Bach is without doubt the most sacred gift to the world of art.

I see it as my job to try to keep Bach in the mainstream and present his music with, rather than without, its emotional core.

I'm not making any absurd comparisons between myself and Bach, but I aspire to that, that my music will have the legs to survive whatever context it finds itself in.

Any species capable of producing, at this earliest, juvenile stage of its development... the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, cannot be all bad.

I think J. S. Bach's music stands among humankind's greatest accomplishments. For me, Bach's music is not only as good as music gets but also as good as it gets, period - as good as existence, reality, life, and the world.

I think J.S. Bach's music stands among humankind's greatest accomplishments. For me, Bach's music is not only as good as music gets, but also as good as it gets, period -- as good as existence, reality, life and the world.

Bach's music is really some of the greatest. I think, in some ways, Bach is the most profound composer of all.

The first music I got really into was Bach.

Jesus never heard of Beethoven and Bach. Why aren't we playing more country music in church ?

Bach in general was so good with the violin. He just finds the genius way around his music on the instrument.

Western music is Bach, Handel and Schubert. It's good music, cleverly done. As a musician, I can see that.

My father was able to play a number of musical instruments and I fell in love with classical music in my teens and I allowed it to influence me. I like to think I took and still do from classical music and various techniques, I have made classical albums and recorded seven different pieces of Bach on different albums and its all music too me.

Probably the most reliable comfort music for me over the years has been Bach.

Music owes as much to Bach as religion to its founder.

One of the tracks that I have is Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - by the way, that's Bach's second son - Emanuel Bach's variations on "Le Folie." You'll definitely hear - I mean, I think if we listen to, say, the last couple of minutes of that track, there's a wide range of colors that the harpsichord is capable of. And I think, you know, that gives lie to the assumption that it doesn't have that kind of variety. And I think it very much speaks for itself.

I'm definitely not a laptop/midi/abelton guy. But there is a lot of music I like. I really like Bach organ music. I really like Chopin piano music. I really like Wendy Carlo's electronic music. I really like Miles Davis and John Mclaughlin jazz style. So I'm not only an old-school rocker, but I have to admit that I'm going to be listening to The Doors, Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, David Bowie and Bob Dylan many times a week.

Composers most identified with the chamber music form are Corelli, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and, of course, Bach. Of course, Bach. If there is any one composer who gives us reason and emotion, it is Bach.

My thesis statement would be—Bach didn't write Baroque music. He wrote great music.

Having nothing to do, I am correcting the Paris edition of Bach; not only the engraver's mistakes, but also the mistakes hallowed by those who are supposed to understand Bach (I have no pretensions to understand better, but I do think that sometimes I can guess).

Bach is the beginning and end of all music.

Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. Bach and Picasso didn't spring full-blown as Bach or Picasso; they needed models. This is especially true of writing.