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Instrumentation is to music precisely what color is to painting.

— Hector Berlioz A travers chants (1862)

Cette face de l’instrumentation est exactement, en musique, ce que le coloris est en peinture.

Original text (French)

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More quotes by Hector Berlioz

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

The author of The Prophet not only has the good luck to have talent, he has also the talent to have good luck.

Les soirées de l'orchestre (1852)

You request me to tell you…if it is true that the creed of all who profess to love high and serious art is: "There is no God but Bach, and Mendelssohn is his prophet"?

Mémoires (1870)

This sudden and unexpected revelation of Shakespeare overwhelmed me. The lightning-flash of his genius revealed the whole heaven of art to me, illuminating its remotest depths in a single flash. I recognised the meaning of real grandeur, real beauty, and the real dramatic truth.

Mémoires (1870)

I feel grateful to the happy chance which forced me to compose freely and in silence, and has thus delivered me from the tyranny of the fingers, so dangerous to thought.

Mémoires (1870)

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The emphasis of study upon a particular aspect of music is in itself ideological because it contains implications about the music's value.

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Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Thomas Carlyle Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)

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.

Eduard Hanslick

Above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges.

François Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Hector Berlioz (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.