Ned Rorem Quotes

We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often more than that in the presence of music without music.

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.

I think that a song, when it works, never mind a piece of long form music, even a song is something that speaks to itself but has a language all of its own, ideally.

The moment you start to talk about playing music, you destroy music. It cannot be talked about. It can only be played, enjoyed and listened to.

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of.

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

Sometimes a couple notes are worth a thousand words.

Every song is true and has its unique story behind it.

Musical expression is never primarily national, but is personal and individual rather. It is so deep, so profound, that it goes beyond and below nationality and gives voice to the most private feeling. In music there is never exact heredity. Each man is an individual.

The Strat covers the complete spectrum of human emotion .. the tremolo enables you to do anything - you can hit any note known to mankind

All the big pop acts that I've been into over the years - whether it's ABBA or Prince - managed to combine amazing melodies and honest human emotion. But coming out of the super-super-commerical pop industry in the 90s, maybe people forgot about the fact that pop music can do both of those things.

As oil will find its way into crevices where water cannot penetrate, so song will find its way where speech can no longer enter.

If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand.

It is a truth forever, that where the speech of man stops short there Music's reign begins.

Today if something is not worth saying, people sing it.

My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity.

People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.

Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by few, and that it alone among all the languages unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable - these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods.

Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.

Tonight I just need my guitar.

Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: Chi sa più, meno sa— Who knows most, knows least.

The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically.

The guitar is a means of expressing music, When you get into the emotional side of it, then it's not the guitar that matters so much as the music itself. But the guitar is the vehicle I use. It's how I express myself. As for the emotional side, music takes up where language leaves off. To try and verbalize what music says, emotionally and spiritually, is futile. Let me put it this way, Louis Armstrong once said if you've got to ask, you'll never know.

Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own.