Louis MacNeice Quotes

I'm practicing the oboe. But I don't play. Just single notes, not an entire piece of music.

I practice more than ever ... mostly scales and arpeggios ... and anything I can't do.

I practice all the scales. Everyone should know lots of scales. Actually, I feel there are only scales. What is a chord, if not the notes of a scale hooked together?

I'm into scales right now.

You are the music while the music lasts.

I've only ever had one doubt about music. It came when I was 11. I hated playing scales.

I'm not the type of player to sit home and practice scales and work on runs.

I had wanted to play drums since the age of 9 when I saw a drum set in the window of a music store for the first time. We took lessons at a local music school and began playing together after about 6-9 months of lessons.

Scales played in the correct musical way are very exciting and rewarding.

For me, food and music are very similar in that you create, you spend a lot of time making something, and it only lasts a few seconds or a few minutes.

Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn't it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity.

By the time I got to the Paris Conservatoire I was very good at the scales and arpeggios.

One does not play Bach without having done scales. But neither does one play a scale merely for the sake of the scale.

I paint flowers to prevent them from dying

A thousand trills and quivering sounds In airy circles o'er us fly, Till, wafted by a gentle breeze, They faint and languish by degrees, And at a distance die.

Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on.

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Everything is about to disappear. You've got to hurry up if you still want to see things.

Give form to the passing World. Freeways are a drama.

Nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.

The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost of unending effort but, with all the forces of gravity against it, a fleeting poise in mid-air, a lovely attitude worthy to be made immortal in a bas-relief, it was lost as soon as it was gained and there remained no more than the memory of an exquisite emotion. So life, lived variously and largely, becomes a work of art only when brought to its beautiful conclusion and is reduced to nothingness in the moment when it arrives at perfection.

How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly?

The colors of living things begin to fade with the last breath, and the soft, springy skin and supple muscle rot within weeks. But the bones sometimes remain, faithful echoes of the shape, to bear some last faint witness to the glory of what was.

The only form of music is melody, without melody music is not feasible, and music and melody are quite inseparable.