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[Music is] a language which we speak and understand but cannot translate

— Eduard Hanslick

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More quotes by Eduard Hanslick

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.

You cannot imagine the wild enthusiasm that these two men created in Vienna. Newspapers went into raptures over each new waltz, and innumerable articles appeared about Lanner and Strauss.

The Prelude to Tristan and Isolde reminds me of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel.

That the sweetly intoxicating three-four rhythm which took hold of hand & foot, necessarily eclipsed great & serious music & made the audience unfit for any intellectual effort goes without saying.

(Referring to the music of Anton Bruckner) "Nightmarish hangover style" (traumverwirrten Katzenjammerstil)

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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)

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

François Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

The most complete knowledge of tonal material cannot create a composer any more than the memorizing of Webster's dictionary can produce a dramatist or poet.

Howard Hanson

Attribution

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