Quotes & Sayings About Sacred Music

You ought to enjoy the rhythm of the sacred ride. — Lailah Gifty Akita

You have only to feel the sacred music of your soul, to dance. — Connie Bowen

It seems to me in retrospect that the department stores and the dime stores did an excellent job of extending the 'sacred space' of Christmas in those days. And I sometimes wonder whether for people of no religion, this might have been the only sacred space they knew. When people rail now against the 'commercial nature of Christmas,' I'm always conflicted an unable to respond. Because I think those who would banish commercialism from the holiday fail to understand how precious and comforting the shop displays and music can be. — Anne Rice

Music has become more pervasive and portable than ever. But it feels less previous in the bargain. I don't want to confuse artistic and commercial value, but it's just a fact that some kid who rips an album for free isn't going to give it the same attention he would if it cost him ten bucks. At what point does convenience become spiritual indolence? I realize this makes me sound like an old fart, but sometimes I get nostalgic for the days when the universe of recorded sound wasn't at our fingertips, when we had to hunt and wait and - horror of horrors - do without, when our longing for a particular record or song made it feel sacred. — Steve Almond

It still amazes me how many musicians aren't really interested in engaging with their audience at all. Alfred Brendel, a pianist for whom I have the greatest respect, has described performance as a sacred communion between the artist and the composer. But what about the audience? Music is communication, a two-way street. — Charles Hazlewood

I think the origin of all this clamour for tonality is not so much the need to sense a relationship to the tonic, as a need for familiar chords: let us be frank and say "for the triad"; and I believe I have good reason to say that just so long as a certain kind of music contains enough such triads, it causes no offence, even if in other ways it most violently clashes with the sacred laws of tonality. — Alban Berg

62. It is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive table form; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifixes designed that the Divine Redeemer's Body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See. — Pope Pius XII

The cause of freedom, in music as elsewhere, is now very nearly triumphant; but at a time when its adversaries were many and powerful, we can hardly imagine the sacred bridge of liberty kept by a more stalwart trio than Schubert the Armorer, Chopin the Refiner, and Liszt the Thunderer. — Hugh Reginald Haweis

The music of Bach is without doubt the most sacred gift to the world of art. — Heitor Villa-Lobos

You meet not so much to sing as to pray, or, better yet, to pray in and through your song. Gregorian chant is for you a privileged form of prayer. You are drawn to it because you perceive the link between music and the sacred, between beauty and truth. — Jacques Hourlier

I consider music to be very sacred and I feel I'm blessed to be born with a talent which allows me to make the best of it — Shreya Ghoshal

Tarot is a lyrical language of the soul's encounter with the Universe. It arises freely, and like the most dignified dance, allows us to express ourselves in motion to the music of the divine. The re-arrangement and reading of the deck is as sacred as the most religious ritual or act of love. Treasure it. Trust it. Let it divine you. — Marcus Katz

Art is sacred.
Punk rock is freedom.
Expression and right to express is vital.
Anyone can be artistic. — Kurt Cobain

There's a vulnerability in music but you've also got to protect your sacred place and have a place you can still retire to that no one else knows about. So that's a thing I just try to balance. — Kimbra

Music is like a really sacred, awesome thing. That first 45 minutes to two hours that you're on stage spending time with music every night is always really great. — Tift Merritt

Ironically, we live in times that are awash in authentic sacred music. — Richard Morris

In the music business I am surrounded by people who don't view music as a sacred voice. They view music as something that they can use and exploit, often times lazily. They have no sense of the tradition, they have no sense of honor about those who came before and charted the path. — Billy Corgan

The singing of hymns and the rendition of selections from the great sacred oratorios by ward choirs all enhance the spirit of worship. — Gordon B. Hinckley

O Music! how it grieves me that imprudence, intemperance, gluttony, should open their channels into thy sacred stream. — Walter Savage Landor

[...] Thus the sedentary peoples create the plastic arts (architecture, sculpture, painting), the arts consisting of forms developed in space; the nomads create the phonetic arts (music, poetry), the arts consisting of forms unfolded in time; for, let us say it again, all art is in its origin essentially symbolical and ritual, and only through a late degeneration, indeed a very recent degeneration, has it lost its sacred character so as to become at last the purely profane 'recreation' to which it has been reduced among our contemporaries. — Rene Guenon

Sweet music! sacred tongue of God. — Charles Godfrey Leland

The power of sacred music increases the honor given to God by the Church in union with Christ, its Head. Sacred music likewise helps to increase the fruits which the faithful, moved by the sacred harmonies, derive from the holy liturgy. These fruits, as daily experience and many ancient and modern literary sources show, manifest themselves in a life and conduct worthy of a Christian. — Pope Pius XII

The library smells like old books - a thousand leather doorways into other worlds. I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers. Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I'll say this is just a place where you can't play music or eat. She's gone. The library sucks. — Laura Whitcomb

Music is my life. It is sacred. — Jimmy Chamberlin

The singing of our sacred hymns, written by the servants of God, has a powerful effect in converting people to the principles of the Gospel, and in promoting peace and spiritual growth. — Heber J. Grant

The Medicine Man occupied the honored role of priest and physician to his tribe. They understood that healing was done by the intercession of celestial spirits. Music was used as the bridge between these planes. Thus we see why music was religious in nature, and music was looked upon as a sacred art. — Corinne Heline

What are our conductors giving us year after year? Only fresh corpses. Over these beautifully embalmed sonatas, toccatas, symphonies and operas the public dance the jitterbug. Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties. From the churches comes the melancholy dirge of the dead Christ, a music which is no more sacred than a rotten turnip. — Henry Miller

Music [is] a science peculiarly productive of a pleasure that no state of life, publick or private, secular or sacred; no difference of age or season; no temper of mind or condition of health exempt from present anguish; nor, lastly, distinction of quality, renders either improper, untimely, or unentertaining. — Samuel Pepys

Dance with your sacred rhythm. — Lailah Gifty Akita

My laboratory is like a church because it is where I figure out what I believe. The machines drone a gathering hymn as I enter. I know whom I'll probably see, and I know how they'll probably act. I know there'll be silence; I know there'll be music, a time to greet my friends, and a time to leave others to their contemplation. There are rituals that I follow, some I understand and some I don't. Elevated to my best self, I strive to do each task correctly. My lab is a place to go on sacred days, as is a church. On holidays, when the rest of the world is closed, my lab is open. My lab is a refuge and an asylum. It is my retreat from the professional battlefield; it is the place where I coolly examine my wounds and repair my armor. And, just like church, because I grew up in it, it is not something from which I can ever really walk away. My — Hope Jahren

We Poets exist for this very purpose. We set men free from their desires.

I don't understand you. You talk in riddles.

What? You don't understand me? And yet you have been reading my poems all this while! -- There is renunciation in our words, renunciation in the metre, renunciation in our music. That is why fortune always forsakes us; and we, in turn always forsake fortune. We go about, all day long, initiating the youths in the sacred cult of fortune-forsaking.

What does it say to us?

It says:
'Ah brothers, don't cling to your goods and chattels,
And sit ever in the corner of your room.
Come out, come out into the open world.
Come out into the highways of life.
Come out, ye youthful Renouncers. — Rabindranath Tagore

If you're a fan of American roots music, you won't want to miss 'Awake My Soul
The Story of the Sacred Harp.' Filmmakers Matt and Erica Hinton have done a fine job capturing the history, sound and spirit of this unusual but compelling art form that, trust me, you don't have to be religious to appreciate. — Eric Zorn

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

An authentic updating of sacred music can take place only in the lineage of the great tradition of the past, of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony. — Pope Benedict XVI

The spirit of playful competition is, as a social impulse, older than culture itself and pervades all life like a veritable ferment. Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play ... We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play ... it arises in and as play, and never leaves it. — Johan Huizinga

My dance is a sacred poem in which each movement is a word and whose every word is underlined by music. The temple in which I dance can be vague or faithfully reproduced, for I am the temple. — Mata Hari

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.
So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.
What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.
And all music is. — Kurt Vonnegut

Yea, she hath passed hereby, and blessed the sheaves,
And the great garths, and stacks, and quiet farms,
And all the tawny, and the crimson leaves.
Yea, she hath passed with poppies in her arms,
Under the star of dusk, through stealing mist,
And blessed the earth, and gone, while no man wist.
With slow, reluctant feet, and weary eyes,
And eye-lids heavy with the coming sleep,
With small breasts lifted up in stress of sighs,
She passed, as shadows pass, among the sheep;
While the earth dreamed, and only I was ware
Of that faint fragrance blown from her soft hair.
The land lay steeped in peace of silent dreams;
There was no sound amid the sacred boughs.
Nor any mournful music in her streams:
Only I saw the shadow on her brows,
Only I knew her for the yearly slain,
And wept, and weep until she come again. — Frederic Manning

We attach to most of our chapels a cultural hall so that our youth may have a place to dance, to perform their talents in musicals and other uplifting entertainment, and we hope our youth leaders as trustees of the building will see to it that only wholesome, uplifting activities are performed in this building. Should you have any reservations whether or not an activity, a style of dancing or tempo of music is in accord with Church standards, may I suggest this guide: Does it uplift and inspire one to higher ideals? Does it develop wholesome relationships between young men and women, or appeal to and arouse their baser instincts? Will it cause one to be a better Latter-day Saint and lead one closer to the Savior? Avoid all activities and dances which bring the world's demoralizing standards into this sacred meeting place. — Ezra Taft Benson

Whatever has made, or does make, or may make music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of Persia's horse,and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod. — Herman Melville

In church, sacred music would make believers of us all - but preachers can be counted on to restore the balance. — Mignon McLaughlin

Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti. — Neville Marriner

My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.
These, by contrast, are the six elements of a Sacred Harp alto: rage, darkness, motherhood, earth, malice, and sex. Once you feel it, you can always do it. You know where to go for it, though it will cost you. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Music is a sacred, a divine, a God-like thing, and was given to man by Christ to lift our hearts up to God, and make us feel something of the glory and beauty of God, and of all which God has made. — Charles Kingsley

Music is the most natural thing in the world. When we go to a gig and we all like it and we share that experience, it's the same sense of communion as a sacred rite in Borneo or wherever it may be; it just gets dressed up different. Its good for the soul. — Paul Weller

If this word "music" is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound. — John Cage

When God's children pass under the shadow of the cross of Calvary, they know that through that shadow lies their passage to the great white throne. For them Gethsemane is as paradise. God fills it with sacred presences; its solemn silence is broken by the music of tender promises, its awful darkness softened and brightened by the sunlight of Heavenly faces and the music of angel wings. — Frederic Farrar

Passion is a deep love for sacred activity. — Lailah Gifty Akita

What we call music in our everyday language is only a miniature, which our intelligence has grasped from that music or harmony of the whole universe which is working behind everything, and which is the source and origin of nature. It is because of this that the wise of all ages have considered music to be a sacred art. For in music the seer can see the picture of the whole universe; and the wise can interpret the secret and nature of the working of the whole universe in the realm of music. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

All I have is the will to remember. Time revoked/fever dreams - I wake up reaching, afraid I'll forget. Pictures keep the woman young. L.A., fall 1958.
Newsprint: link the dots. Names, events - so brutal they beg to be connected. Years down - the story stays dispersed. The names are dead or too guilty to tell. I'm old, afraid I'll forget: I killed innocent men. I betrayed sacred oaths. I reaped profit from horror.
Fever - that time burning. I want to go with the music - spin, fall with it. — James Ellroy

America does four things better than any other country in the world: rock music, movies, software and high-speed pizza delivery. All of these are sacred American art forms. — Courtney Love

Rome is a city where in every corner you have a reminder of the sacred world. That's why I have sacred music, minimalist sacred music, which is also music I like, because at the end of the day, that's what I want to do. — Paolo Sorrentino

The women used the music to get their men to relate to them better: "talk to me, tell me what's on your mind." Men used the music to get the girls in the mood to make love. So either way you had it, Barry White is the one artist who actually was in your bedroom with you at your most sacred, sensuous moment of your life. — Barry White

Laughter is a holy thing. It is as sacred as music and silence
and solemnity, maybe more sacred. Laughter is like a prayer, like
a bridge over which creatures tiptoe to meet each other. Laughter
is like mercy; it heals. When you can laugh at yourself, you are
free. — Ted Loder

The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services. But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action. — Pope Paul VI

The dancing vortex of a sacred metaphor clashes horns and halos to make wounded music set to the tempo of a new era in brilliant labor. — Aberjhani

It bothers me when I hear it in a car commercial or some such. But for the most part, it's better than seeing sacred music relegated to the scrap heap. — Richard Morris

Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened. — Archie Shepp

We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music. — Albert Einstein

Music is either sacred or profane. What is sacred accords completely with its nobility, and this is where music most immediately influences life; such influence remains unchanged at all times and in every epoch. Profane music should be altogether cheerful.
Music of a kind that mixes the sacred with the profane is godless and shoddy music wich goes in for expressing feeble, wretched, deplorable feelings, and is just insipid. For it is not serious enough to be sacred and it lacks the chief quality of the opposite kind: cheerfulness. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

That was something else he had learned from clever Odysseus, who had tied himself to the mast of his ship so that he might hear the captivating song of the sirens without being tempted to his death. If you ever allowed your most sacred promises to be broken - if you set sail with a rope you knew was weak - then you would never be able to enjoy all the best kinds of music. — Anonymous

Music has an alchemical quality. And there's more than one voice on the piano. You have two hands. One can be playing a celestial melody while the other is doing quite the opposite. The joining of the profane and the sacred, or the passionate and the compassionate, happens right there on the keyboard. — Tori Amos

Another way of putting this is that black Baptists were outsiders to the dominant white/European way of doing church. Instead, they forged a history of their own, and even their own distinct form of sacred music. — Thomas S. Kidd

I also able to graciously survive the PhD from the grace, which comes from prayer, bible reading, extensive story reading, fasting, fellowship, listen to music, daily dance and sacred writing. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The Fibonacci Sequence turns out to be the key to understanding how nature designs... and is... a part of the same ubiquitous music of the spheres that builds harmony into atoms, molecules, crystals, shells, suns and galaxies and makes the Universe sing. — Guy Murchie

The music defied classification. If I had been writing a
review of the show, I would have labeled it progressive,
guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. But the guitars made sounds guitars
didn't always make. Symphonic sounds. Sacred sounds.
The music dug in so deep you didn't hear it so much as feel
it, reminding me of a dream I used to have when I was a kid,
where I would be standing on a street corner, I would jump
into the air, flap my arms, and soar up into the sky.
That's the only way I could describe the music.
It was the sonic equivalent of flight. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

Now that music is faithfully reproducible, musicians are not needed as once they were. And music itself has changed. Though small cadres of classicists keep the sacred and ineffable alive, they are under siege by coarse generations whose music is hardly as musical as a bus engine or a chain saw. Something must have occurred during their mothers' pregnancies. How else is it possible to explain that playing Bach keeps them away from public spaces the way iron spikes drive pigeons from cathedral ledges? — Mark Helprin

I used to think there was something dirty about being paid for something which is a sacred thing to do. I can't disconnect the act of writing music from the act of prayer. If anyone tries to stop me working, it feels like someone is trying to stop me from taking communion. — John Tavener

Wind is the sacred music of the leaves; wherever and whenever the wind blows, over there leaves start their holy dancing frantically! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

When she finished, no one clapped or even breathed, for they were still inside that sacred place that music can sometimes create. — Mary Doria Russell

Ah, music, sacred tongue of God! I hear thee calling and I come. — Confucius

Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners, schedules, beepers. Chronos is time at her worst. Chronos keeps track ... Chronos is the world's time. Kairos is transcendence, infinity, reverence, joy, passion, love, the Sacred. Kairos is intimacy with the Real. Kairos is time at her best ... Kairos is Spirit's time. We exist in chronos. We long for kairos. That's our duality. Chronos requires speed so that it won't be wasted. Kairos requires space so that it might be savored. We do in chronos. In kairos we're allowed to be ... It takes only a moment to cross over from chronos into kairos, but it does take a moment. All that kairos asks is our willingness to stop running long enough to hear the music of the spheres. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

I've always loved music and held it as a sacred thing that I can't touch, as I don't really want to deconstruct it or be a musician. — Aaron Koblin

I kind of think that music in general is a sacred thing, and that's what music has kind of always been for me. — Matisyahu

Musically, New York is a big influence on me. Walk down the street for five minutes and you'll hear homeless punk rockers, people playing Caribbean music and reggae, sacred Islamic music and Latino music, so many different types of music. — Moby

The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing ... Only when our feet learn once again how to walk in a sacred manner, and our hearts hear the real music of creation, can we bring the world back into balance. — Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

That's the beauty of music. You can take a theme from a Bach sacred chorale and improvise. It doesn't make any difference where the theme comes from; the treatment of it can be jazz. — Dave Brubeck

I like vinyl because it's not quite random access. You have to pick up the needle, flip the record. I do think that an 18-20 minute block of music is sacred, and I can see why it's catching on. I really don't know if it will stay, but it's such a bizarre world, I think it's possible. — John Vanderslice

When it came down to it, though, you had to remember all those assholes cutting you off in traffic and walking the streets and shouting in bars and turning their music up too loud and mugging you and raping you and selling you lemon cars-all those assholes were just children who'd aged. No miracle. Nothing sacred in that. — Dennis Lehane

If people listen to music and dance every day, they find happiness and sacred solutions to any problem. — Lailah Gifty Akita