20th Century Music Quotes & Sayings

Gershwin's melodic gift was phenomenal. His songs contain the essence of New York in the 1920s and have deservedly become classics of their kind, part of the 20th-century folk-song tradition in the sense that they are popular music which has been spread by oral tradition (for many must have sung a Gershwin song without having any idea who wrote it). — George Gershwin

She, human and wolf both, craved him like a junkie just as she craved all the things he seemed to promise: safety, love, hope - a place to belong. — Patricia Briggs

Louis Armstrong was the primary contributor to jazz music in the 20th century. His improvisational skills served as the principal model for all who came after him, regardless of one's chosen instrument. — Ellis Marsalis Jr.

Alexia had spent long hours wondering over that mustache. Werewolves did not grow hair, as they did not age. Where had it come from? Had he always had it? For how many centuries had his poor abused upper lip labored under the burden of such vegetation? — Gail Carriger

My biggest poetic influences are probably 20th-century British and Irish poets. So I suppose I'm always listening for the music I associate with that poetry, the telling images, the brevity. I want to hear it in my own work as well as in the poetry I read. However, I think I'm generally more forgiving of other poets than myself. — David Starkey

I gladly accepted the commission but was uncertain about what the end result would be. On the one hand, Cuban music was conquering the world; being heard everywhere, and our small island was already producing one of the popular musical genres of the 20th century. — Alejo Carpentier

Johnny Depp is really my favorite male actor. Ellen Page would be my favorite female actor. Both of them, just because of the diversity that Johnny plays in his roles and just the different characters that he morphs into, it's fantastic. — Callan McAuliffe

Frozen in fear, you avoid responsibility because you think your experience is beyond your control. This stance keeps you from making decisions, solving problems, or going after what you want in life. — David Emerald Womeldorff

Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics. — Ken Burns

In art and music, particularly in the 20th century, there was a big period there where for something to be called profound you had to not be able to understand it. — Joshua Bell

Late 20th century music was a really important thing. It changed the world, and I'm part of that, and now I'm part of the museum that celebrates that. — Daryl Hall

There is this tremendous amount of arrogance and hubris, where somebody can look at something for five minutes and dismiss it. Whether you talk about gaming or 20th century classical music, you can't do it in five minutes. You can't listen to 'The Rite of Spring' once and understand what Stravinsky was all about. — Penn Jillette

American musicians, instead of investigating ragtime, attempt to ignore it, or dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But that has always been the course of scholasticism in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the 'people' like is poohpoohed; whatever is 'popular' is spoken of as not worth the while. The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius. — James Weldon Johnson

Every good that you do, every good that you say, every good thought you think, vibrates on and on and never ceases. The evil remains only until it is overcome by good, but the good remains forever. — Peace Pilgrim

Somehow in the 20th Century an idea has developed that music is an activity or skill which is not comprehensible to the man in the street. This is an arrogant assertion and not necessarily a true one. — Gavin Bryars

I started out coming from more of a concert music background. It just turns out that 20th-century music techniques lend themselves to scary movies and horror movies. — Marco Beltrami

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art. — Brian Eno

His eldest sister (who modestly prefers to be identified here as a Tuckahoe homemaker) has asked me to describe him as looking like 'the blue-eyed Jewish-Irish Mohican scout who died in your arms at the roulette table at Monte Carlo. — J.D. Salinger

Hope is an anchor for the soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The movie creaked along, obvious and mediocre plot. Mediocre script, mediocre music. They ought to have sealed the thing in a time capsule and marked "Late 20th Century Mediocrity" and buried it somewhere. — Haruki Murakami

I think every age has a medium that talks to it more eloquently than the others. In the 19th century it was symphonic music and the novel. For various technical and artistic reasons, film became that eloquent medium for the 20th century. — Walter Murch

There is a striking feature of the twentieth century ... the musical creation of the 20th century is qualitatively different from the 18th century, in that it lacks that immediate access or short-term access that was true of the past ... I have no doubt that if we took two children of today two groups and taught one of them Mozart Haydn & Beethoven and the other Schoenberg and post Schoenbergian music, that there would be very substantial difference in their capacity to comprehend and deal with it, and that may reflect, and in fact if that's correct it would reflect, something about our innate musical capacities. — Noam Chomsky

You think about, like, [20th-century classical composers] Alban Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern sitting around in some living room in Vienna and being like, "We are the end of music. We are the end of this tradition. Music is done." — David Longstreth

Many consider that Shostakovich is the greatest 20th-century composer. In his 15 symphonies, 15 quartets, and in other works he demonstrated mastery of the largest and most challenging forms with music of great emotional power and technical invention ... All his works are marked by emotional extremes - tragic intensity, grotesque and bizarre wit, humour, parody, and savage sarcasm. — Dmitri Shostakovich

Jazz is really 20th-century fusion music. You take West African harmony and rhythm, mix with European harmony, and boom! — Christian Scott

There is always a reason behind actions, and there is always a reason behind the bitter or better actions we take each moment of time! No matter how bitter or better the past has been or the present is becoming, there is a reason for action! Awake and take action! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I progressed through so many different styles of music through my teen years, both as a player and a vocalist, particularly the jazz and pop of the early 20th Century. — Jeff Healey

But the beauty of Einstein's equations, for example, is just as real to anyone who's experienced it as the beauty of music. We've learned in the 20th century that the equations that work have inner harmony. — Edward Witten

First, it doesn't surprise me that traditional music has experienced a kind of exhaustion in the 20th century - not forgetting that many musicians started to look outside the traditional structures of tonality. — Pierre Schaeffer

In all natural disasters through time, man needs to attach meaning to tragedy, no matter how random and inexplicable the event is. — Nathaniel Philbrick

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music. — Nina Simone

The 20th century is a period defined by cultural and artistic movements. However, the 21st century creative-scape that we occupy now doesn't really have movements in the same way. Instead it's made up of diverse individuals working across various platforms simultaneously; art, architecture, film, music and literature. — Doug Aitken

Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It's a 12-bar form that's played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that's been used by rock n' roll. It's related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition. — Wynton Marsalis

There are no limits to where our brains can take us. We are, if there be a God, God's gracious creation. — John Lydon

Don't gloss over a routine or piece of code involved in the bug because you "know" it works. Prove it. Prove it in this context, with this data, with these boundary conditions. — Andrew Hunt