Johann Johannsson Quotes

Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.

I like to have space between the notes. I like to use silence.

When you're making music or playing a song, I find the moments when there are no instruments being played even stronger than when they are being played. Because they add tension. It's also an ego-less thing - a place where you have no ego - when you're with a bunch of musicians who stop and listen instead.

For me it was really important to get the essence out of the music for the story and not, sort of, press the music into the service of the whimsical telling of it.

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes ah, that is where the art resides.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

I think some people would say that I do overwhelm the words with the music, and sometimes thank goodness I do.

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

Before music there was silence and the duet format allows you to build from the silence in a very special way.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

The silence between the notes is the good part for me. I find that to be a very important part of music that is often lacking.

In many a piece of music, it's the pause or the rest that gives the piece its beauty and its shape. And I know I, as a writer, will often try to include a lot of empty space on the page so that the reader can complete my thoughts and sentences and so that her imagination has room to breathe.

I played piano, I learned a lot about music.

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

Everyone felt like they knew Ray Charles and in a way they did, because he was embodied by his music.

I would like to be remembered as a - somebody who could rock your soul or make your cry with a song. And somebody who's kind, who loved to laugh, and loved his God.

The relation between practical and spiritual spheres in music is obvious, if only because it demands ears, finger, consciousness and intellect.

The great musicians are those who can reach people, who can make people feel something.

Beethoven's symphonies are not 'relaxing.' They are the most exciting things that have ever been created by a human being.

Sometimes the band can't fully hear your fill, so they come in differently. So I've also learned not to really step out too much, because you sacrifice the band when you do that.

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

Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.

Music needs room to breathe.

In music, what is very important is temporality of space and length, based on the breathing space the director gives the music within the film, by separating the music from various elements of reality, like noises, dialogues... That's how you treat music properly, but it doesn't always happen this way. Music is often blamed, but it's not its fault.

Silence marks time, saturates and shapes African-American art. Silences structure our music, fill the spaces - point, counterpoint - of rhythm, cadence, phrasing.