David Longstreth Quotes

All music has to speak in some form or other.

I don't think Beethoven expresses religious truth. He expresses a human truth.

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 think that's my gift in this world is to put experience into music.

My proposition is that music is at the heart of what 'The Magic Flute' means: that it's Mozart's music, not the words, we should be attending to. Music expresses what can't be expressed otherwise.

I want my music to do the explaining.

Is it not the business of the conductor to convey to the public in its dramatic form the central idea of a composition; and how can he convey that idea successfully if he does not enter heart and soul into the life of the music and the tale it unfolds?

Musicians from the beginning of time have been there to express the mood and the musical feelings in the air for whatever's going on in that particular culture. It's the greatest joy as a musician to be able to translate that, be part of something and watch the scenery around you.

With few exceptions, music has been for some centuries the art which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist's soul, in musical sound.

My training in music and composition then led me to a kind of musical language process in which, for example, the sound of the words I play with has to expose their true meaning against their will so to speak.

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

There's not only emotion in the way you sing but also in what you sing. That way I can compensate it.

Music expresses what cannot be put into words I like to think, and I think the band makes a good go at it.

I think that music, being an expression of the human heart, or of the human being itself, does express just what is happening - the whole of human experience at the particular time that it is being expressed.

Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.

Sure, I love people, and I want to communicate with people. I mean, what is music anyway? It's a form of communication - at least for me it is. And that's why I play the kind of music that I think - that I hope - can communicate with people.

Music should be able to invoke the natural emotions in all human beings. Music is not notes fixed on apiece of paper.

It's entertaining to watch somebody break my music down or explain what he thinks I was thinking during the process of making these records. Because... he has no idea.

I could hear and feel music going on in me, and I couldn't get it out. You can always depend on a guitar.

Music is an emotion, and I put it out there.

That's what I like about Frank Ocean or Bon Iver - they try to capture a feeling in the most sincere way.

These seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words.

With film, it's all about the actor being able to feel the things that the character's feeling. It must do some strange things to your mind. Music I find much easier because you're being honest about where you are as a person.

The character of instrumental music... lets the emotions radiate and shine in their own character without presuming to display them as real or imaginary representations.

I always loved singing and writing poetry. I always loved music, and I've loved writing my whole life. When I put them together, it was probably in my early 20s where I put words to music for the first time.