How to Listen to Great Music Quotes

“To periodize or not to periodize? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outraged academes by periodizing (and thus to blaspheme through generalization) or to address large-scale stylistic trends without prevarication; ’tis a fardel to bear, and bear it we shall. For such utile aids are not to be scorned, but embraced lest even greater misunderstanding be our lot. O Baroque! O Classical! O Romantic! Though the thorns of despised love be your reward, we will invoke you even as we curse you, for, like our knees, thou art poorly made, but we cannot walk without you.”
― Robert Greenberg, How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart

“We are hardwired to hear and make music. Yes, we will sigh with pleasure when we hear a favorite theme played by an orchestra, and who hasn’t felt a stab of nostalgia, or even brushed away a tear, when hearing a song reminiscent of youth or a lost love? However, such exquisite moments notwithstanding, the musical experience represents something far deeper. Broadly defined, music is sound in time. Sound is nothing less than our perception of the vibrations, the movement, of the universe around us. Music is an intensification, a crystallization, a celebration, a glorification, of that movement and those vibrations. Pretty heady stuff. Far beyond spoken language—which, with its sounds in time, might rightly be considered a low-end sort of music—music is a universal language; one need not speak Ashanti in order to groove to West African drumming; or German in order to be emotionally flayed by Beethoven; or English to totally freak when listening to Bruce Springsteen. Say it with flowers? Nah. If you really want to get your expressive point across, say it with music. No human activity”
― Robert Greenberg, How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart

“Just as e-mail would seem to have done away with the ancient art of handwritten letters, so the advent of printed music brought an end to the exquisite art of hand-copied, illuminated music manuscripts. We can see these huge hymnals today in the church and cathedral libraries of Europe: massive medieval and early Renaissance collections of plainchant, copied and illuminated by hand on vellum. These volumes are big: stick four legs on ’em and you’ve got yourself a coffee table. The expense of producing these books was prodigious, so a church would buy one such hymnal for all to share. It would be placed on a stand at one end of the choir loft. Anyone with bad eyes sat close to it, and those with good eyes sat farther away. In such a way, a single book could serve an entire choir.”
― Robert Greenberg, How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart

“We cannot possibly overstate the importance of the Christian Church for its role in preserving, defending, and, ultimately, re-civilizing Europe.”
― Robert Greenberg, How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart