Music Notation Quotes

“I needed another basis for musical structure. This I found in sound's duration parameter, sound's only parameter which is present even when no sound is intended.”
― John Cage, M: Writings '67–'72

“He held the papers up to the moonlight. There was a little smudging, there, right where the chorus was supposed to come in with a D major triad. But it wasn't so bad.
His eyes drifted from the pages to the moon, which shone clearly through his unglazed window. A bright star kept it company. A faint breeze blew, causing the thick leaves of the trees below to make shoe-like clacking noises against the castle wall. It carried with it whatever scents it had picked up on its way from the sea: sandalwood, sand, oranges, dust. Dry things, stuff of the land.
Eric looked back at his music, tried to recapture the sound and feel of the ocean that had played in his head before waking, aquamarine and sweet.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Where do you think the notes were before Chopin wrote his nocturnes?”
With a nod of confusion I asked, “Where?”
She leaned back, exhaling a stream of smoke, as if unraveling a hidden truth. “I believe those notes were always present, suspended in the air, waiting for an artist's embrace. It's as if there's an intangible essence, an elusive sense, that artists possess. They have the ability to pluck those ethereal notes from the unseen and mold them into tangible forms, giving voice to our deepest emotions and translating them into melodies that resonate within us.”
― Asif Hossain, Serenade of Solitude

“You see the big lights above the stage, the pine cones?...Tonight, when Simone plays his songs, the music notes will come out of his cello, and they will fly in every direction. You see, all the notes are inside his cello right now. But when he moves the bow, like this,...it is like a key that opens the door, and out they come, one at a time....You see? The round part here is their tummy, and these are the wings. Tonight Simone will set them free, and they will fly around us so fast we might not even see them. And do you know what they do when they fly away? They hide. Many of them will go straight up and hide in the organ pipes. And some will hide in the curtains and under the seats. And then, late, late tonight, when everyone has gone home, they will all come out of hiding. And they will have a big celebration because they are free. And they will make their very own song, one only they know. And sometimes, if someone is in the building late at night, they hear strange sounds and think it's a ghost, but really it is only all the happy notes at their big parade.”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden