Hanns Eisler Quotes

Music should be able to invoke the natural emotions in all human beings. Music is not notes fixed on apiece of paper.

Is it not the business of the conductor to convey to the public in its dramatic form the central idea of a composition; and how can he convey that idea successfully if he does not enter heart and soul into the life of the music and the tale it unfolds?

The guitar for me is a translation device. It's not a goal. And in some ways, jazz isn't a destination for me. For me, jazz is a vehicle that takes you to the true destination - a musical one that describes all kinds of stuff about the human condition and the way music works.

I was touched by the magic of music. My way to communicate was through my guitar and music.

Music can describe emotions far more accurately than words ever can. As soon as I realised that, I knew music was where I wanted to be.

I make music for people to relate to and to connect with me. I want to tap into different emotions.

The whole deal with my music has been the emotional quality.

I don't think Beethoven expresses religious truth. He expresses a human truth.

I'm kind of lucky in the fact that I can take something that's in my head and write it down, or I can listen to a piece of music that somebody else has written and try to tap into what the music's saying and just kind of follow that, you know. I mean, nine times out of 10, I'm just kind of following where the music takes me.

I feel like vocals are to music what portraits are to painting. They're the humanity. Landscapes are good and fine, but at the end of the day everyone loves the Mona Lisa.

Mozart makes us care about people in flashes of lightning.

My proposition is that music is at the heart of what 'The Magic Flute' means: that it's Mozart's music, not the words, we should be attending to. Music expresses what can't be expressed otherwise.

I want my music to do the explaining.

Every song I've ever written always starts with the words because I want the music to be the musical extension of the feelings of the words, and not the words being the emotional extension of the feeling of the music.

Music is an emotion, and I put it out there.

I want to reach the people. This music is the people's music. It's music for your brain, for your heart, for your soul. That is what we always go to achieve. Soul united.

How we absorb music is unique. I know what I do. When I'm listening to music, I tend to find myself in a song. That's what really makes you connect is if you feel what that song is saying.

These seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words.

One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things.

In music, you feel a connection to the voice and think about the person behind it. In art that's secondary.

Music is important.

The end of all good music is to affect the soul.

I hear music as narrative.

Music has this emotional thing to it, and it touches people in crazy ways. The power of having that power is something that, once you have it, you don't want it to ever end.

What I've learned how to do as I've gotten older is to take all of the information that I have, and push it aside, and try to distill each song into an emotional theme. The hardest thing that I've ever had to learn how to do in playing music is use the sound of my instrument to create an emotional effect.