Fugue Music Quotes & Sayings

Air power is the most difficult of military force to measure or even express in precise terms. — Winston Churchill

The building, it so happened, was a music college of the kind she herself had left two years before, abandoning her lifelong hopes of becoming a professional musician; she recognised the piece as the D minor fugue from Bach's *French Suites*, a piece she had always loved and that caused her, hearing it so unexpectedly, to feel there on the pavement the most extraordinary sense of loss. It was though the music had once belonged to her and now no longer did; as though she had been excluded from its beauty, was being forced to see it in the possession of someone else, and to revisit in its entirety her own sadness at her inability, for a number of reasons, to remain in that world. — Rachel Cusk

The final, unfinished fugue from The Art of Fugue is the greatest piece of music ever composed. — Glenn Gould

Holmes," I asked as we stepped into the street, "I realise the question sounds sophomoric, but do you find that there are aspects of yourself with which you feel most comfortable? I only ask out of curiosity; you needn't feel obliged to answer." He offered me his arm and, formally, I took it. "'Who am I?' you mean." He smiled at the question and gave what was at first glance a most oblique answer. "Do you know what a fugue is?" "Are you changing the subject?" "No." I thought in silence for some distance before his answer arranged itself sensibly in my mind. "I see. Two discrete sections of a fugue may not appear related, unless the listener has received the entire work, at which time the music's internal logic makes clear the relationship. — Laurie R. King

The dark organ music filled the Department of Post-Mortem Communications. Moist assumed it was all part of the ambience, although the mood would have been more precisely obtained if the tune it was playing did not appear to be Cantate and Fugue for someone Who Has Trouble with the Pedals. — Terry Pratchett

A cigar has " ... a fire at one end and a fool at the other." — Horace Greeley

He sat in the chapel for hours picking his way through fugues. A dozen notes, hardly music. But then those few notes spoke to each other, subject and answer, by repetition, by diminution, by augmentation, even looping backwards on themselves in a course like the retrograde motion of Mars. He listened as if he had as many ears as fingertips, and, like a blind man, could feel textures that were barely there. At the end of two or three pages of music he would hear all the voices twining together in a construction of such dizzying power that the walls of the chapel could barely contain it. — Kate Grenville

Some have immersed themselves in internet materials that magnify, exaggerate, and in some cases invent shortcomings of early Church leaders. Then they draw incorrect conclusions that can affect testimony. Any who have made these choices can repent and be spiritually renewed. — Quentin L. Cook

Temporal experience is neither completely recurrent (in which case it would be wholly knowable) nor completely variable (in which case it would be wholly inscrutable). In effect, it is more like a piece of complex music, a Bach fugue heard for the first time. In one sense, we are excited and surprised by the novel disposition of tones and rhythms and by the uncanny variety of the treatment. In another sense, we realize that recurring ideas and cycles are what give the work its native character, and that the variations, however stunning, have significance only in terms of their relationship to these underlying themes. Conversely, the recurrent themes are realizable in their fullest sense only through the variations upon them. The careful student of time is thus as sure that certain things will recur as he is sure that they will recur in dazzling new forms. — Robert Grudin

Marriage happens; it can't be planned. When it has to happen, it will happen. Normally, what we always believe is that however prepared you are, if it's not meant to happen, it won't. And however much we have not planned, it will still happen if it's destined. — Rani Mukerji

The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time. — Michael Tippett

I listen
as I eat the street for supper,
listen to the pain songs
of Mexico.
Flashes of returning
come with the birds. — Joseph Ceravolo

Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology. — Yuval Noah Harari

[ ... ] he played me the Fourth Prelude and Fugue (C-sharp minor). Now, I knew what to expect from Liszt at the pianoforte; but from Bach himself, much as I had studied him, I never expected what I learnt that day. For then I saw the difference between study and revelation; through his rendering of this single fugue Liszt revealed the whole of Bach to me, so that I now know of a surety where I am with him, can take his every bearing from this point, and conquer all perplexity and every doubt by power of strong faith. — Richard Wagner

No one ever told us we had to study our lives,make of our lives a study, as if learning natural historyor music, that we should beginwith the simple exercises firstand slowly go on tryingthe hard ones, practicing till strengthand accuracy became one with the daringto leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down in the wild arpeggioor faulting the full sentence of the fugue. — Adrienne Rich

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

Others, tiring of the sound of Buxtehude and Bach for hours on end, would complain there was no tune. That was exactly the thing he liked best about a fugue, the fact that it could not be sung. A fugue was not singular, as a melody was, but plural. It was a conversation. — Kate Grenville

But music doesn't sum up my approach to literature - even in Vain Art of the Fugue. To 'fugue' I had to invent 'trap-words,' or words that would force the narrator to turn around and start his path anew. — Dumitru Tepeneag

There is no kind of music I don't listen to. Everything good is interesting. I am as happy with a Bach fugue as I am with a record by Thelonious Monk. — Maira Kalman

In my own life I studied music, not creative writing; I see a novel as music - an opening as an overture, themes and subplots as lines in a fugue. The chance to write a novel about a musician boxed in by all kinds of limitations but who plays out his ultimate struggle for freedom at the piano was irresistible. — Nicole Mones

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. — Dmitri Shostakovich

The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings. — Jung Chang

The Lord doesn't always remove the sources of stress in our lives ... but He's always there and cares for us. We can feel His arms around us on the darkest night. — James Dobson

I enjoy practicing law too much to even contemplate retiring, but I often think about engaging in serious study of the history of art, of the intricacies of classical music. I could write a fugue, or perhaps learn to play the cello. — Karen DeCrow

Love is not ful of pittie (as men say)
But deaffe and cruell, where he meanes to pray. — Christopher Marlowe

'The Piano Lesson' is very sophisticated, easily the most adult or complex material I've attempted. It's the first film I've written that has a proper story, and it was a big struggle for me to write. It meant I had to admit the power of narrative. — Jane Campion