Esa-Pekka Salonen Quotes

Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.

Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy - and it made me feel something. That's when I realized music was inside me.

Music falls on the silence like a sense / A passion that we feel, not understand.

Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.

If it's got the feeling, if the music moves you or not, it doesn't matter what the genre is to me.

I can tell you, dearest friend, that if it became known how much friendship, love and a world of human and spiritual references I have smuggled into these three movements, the adherents of programme music - should there be any left - would go mad with joy.

I don't think I have ever met a single person who isn't moved by music of some kind.

I love grooves and dance music, but I like the feeling behind songs too.

I think it's always interesting how music means different things to different people, and people who overthink it are looking to in some ways show off with music, versus people who just respond to a song and decide to sing it.

I close my eyes when I sing so I can feel the song better.

People listen to music with cavemen ears: Is it a bird song or the call of a lion? The audience at a musical is dancing in their hearts.

So basically, I think music at its best can be everything. It can be totally stupid and very intellectual and emotional at the same time. I don't think all those things shut each other out.

Music is feeling. You can try to verbalize it. It really just hits you or it doesn't.

Our music may sound big emotionally, but that's more to do with the playing, the level of musicianship and the full-on energy. Often, the lyrics are often quite small and focused.

It's impossible to play a run with as much feeling as a single note. I've never been so much into runs as making single notes cry.

When I hear the songs 'Dangerous' or 'End of My World', I go, 'Wow, I didn't even know I could go that low!' And when I played them for my family, they said, 'That doesn't even sound like you.'

I cannot say what I think is right about music. I only know the rightness of it.

I've cried over string arrangements.

Applause should be an emotional response to the music, rather than a regulated social duty.

When you're moved by music, that's always good.

I can admire music where you feel the composer has everything organized and perfectly shaped, but it doesn't touch me. I like to feel that a composer is wounded, like all of us.

I love to zoom in and study why a chord is making me feel a certain way, but then I've learnt to zoom out again. Because if I'm not actually feeling it, there's not much point making it in the first place.

I realized music is the most important thing to me and I love writing songs, and I think I had more to say in life.

I'm attached to the beat. The beat speaks words. I love music.

I like the sounds of real, living, breathing musicians. When a real person plays something, there's a soul. They're giving you their emotions.