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Formalism is music that people don’t understand at first hearing.

— Sergei Prokofiev

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More quotes by Sergei Prokofiev

This is my best work, but only because The Flaming Angel is my greatest.

My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.

Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (1960)

In my view, the composer, just as the poet, the sculptor or the painter, is in duty bound to serve Man, the people. He must beautify human life and defend it. He must be a citizen first and foremost, so that his art might consciously extol human life and lead man to a radiant future. Such is the immutable code of art as I see it.

Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (1960)

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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.

Lucy Green

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: Sergei Prokofiev (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.