Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

I think the most important thing for a listener is to realize that he, too, should not listen to music in a passive way; that if you sit in a concert hall and expect to be moved or taken off your seat by the music, it will not happen.

Everyone hears a song a different way and hears timing a different way.

The course hitherto pursued in musical aesthetics has nearly always been hampered by the false assumption that the object was not so much to inquire into what is beautiful in music as to describe the feelings which music awakens.

The level on which Japan seems to have picked up on my music seems to be on a more abstract level.

It's always interesting to me that we all hear music differently. It's an awesome experience to hear what other people hear.

In other words, I think that if an audience listens to something as an experience of how in tune it is or something of that kind, that the whole point is somehow being missed, and the music has failed.

Music, of almost any kind, always made sense to me.

Either your understanding of the meaning of music is there from the beginning or it is not.

I am tone deaf.

Sometimes people talk about music, whether blogs or magazines, in a strange way where it doesn't seem like they're actually listening to it.

We'd never expect to understand a piece of music on one listen, but we tend to believe we've read a book after reading it just once.

Music is subjective to everyone's unique experience.

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

The music speaks for itself. You either like it or you don't, or you're somewhere in between. That doesn't change whether I'm in the band or not.

When you do a lyric for 'April in Paris,' those who have heard it before can hear it in a different way now. It can add perspective to a great piece of music that does not have a lyric and may be inaccessible to lot of ears because people don't deal with complex music very well.

I don't really care very much if I don't think that the critics really understand music.

It doesn't take much for anyone to pick up anything I play - it's quite simple. I go for a good song. And if you hear a good song, you don't dissect it - you just listen, and every bit seems right.

Music should be judged on what you hear, not what you think you might hear.

Your understanding of music depends on your capacity to perceive it.

I love learning how people hear my music because everyone has different references.

My perception is that there is no distinction in music as many people perceive. The difference lies in the way you hear the music.

One eare it heard, at the other out it went.

I don't think people care about the mechanics of songwriting.

Think about a piece of music - some great symphony - we don't expect it to get better as it develops, or that its whole purpose is to reach the final crescendo. The joy is found in listening to the music in each moment.

It's just a sound, and a feeling that's in the music. And you either hear it and appreciate it, or you don't.