10 poignant quotations about music by great writers

7 March 2024, 10:43 | Up to date: 7 March 2024, 21:58

In honour of World E-book Day, we’ve compiled among the most transferring quotations ever written about music by among the greatest authors, poets and philosophers in historical past.

The hyperlink between music and literature is unmistakable, spanning centuries, canons and creators of all types. Who higher, then, than the world’s best writers to try to obtain the unattainable – describing the facility of music in phrases?

Learn extra: 7 of the best pieces of classical music for reading

1. Jane Austen

   

   British novelist Jane Austen penned this relatable quote in her 1815 novel Emma, spoken by ‘Mrs. Elton’. Austen herself was an achieved pianist, practising day-after-day. Within the Regency interval, it was anticipated that each one refined younger girls play the piano, and Austen was no exception. Music books had been costly, nevertheless, so Austen would usually copy out borrowed scores by hand, onto dominated pages in her diary. Austen’s ardour for music could be seen in her books, because it was fairly often a central subject in a lot of her novels.

2. Victor Hugo

   

   Victor Hugo, the French Romantic author and politician, was identified for being vocal about his love for music. There are a number of references to music in a lot of his most well-known novels, together with Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Lots of his works have even impressed iconic works for the stage, together with Verdi’s opera Rigoletto – based mostly on Hugo’s play, Le roi s’amuse – in addition to the ultra-famous musicals, Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris.

3. Virginia Woolf

   

   Thought-about some of the vital Twentieth-century authors, British author Virginia Woolf was considerably impacted by music. It straight impressed her personal literary compositions, enjoying a central position in her work as a author. She even deliberate to put in writing a e book detailing the affect of music on literature, however this purpose was, sadly, reduce brief by her dying in 1941. Maybe her most revealing comment was written in a letter to her buddy Elizabeth Trevelyan: “It is odd, for I’m not recurrently musical, however I all the time consider my books as music earlier than I write them.”

4. Kurt Vonnegut

   

   American author Kurt Vonnegut, creator of Slaughterhouse-5, managed to seize the sensation many people have about music being the closest we as people can get to the divine. The whole quote truly reads, “If I ought to ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: ‘The one proof he wanted for the existence of God was music.’”

5. George Eliot

   

   Mary Ann Evans, identified by her pen identify George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet and one of many main writers of the Victorian period. Though she wrote seven novels, she is maybe most well-known for her 1871 masterpiece, Middlemarch. This transferring quote comes from her 1860 novel, The Mill on the Floss, and provides us some perception into her personal emotions on music. Eliot was truly a talented pianist, who excelled in classes whereas attending college, and music remained vital to her all through her life.

6. Leo Tolstoy

   

   Russian author Leo Tolstoy made his love of music identified all through his life and in his many well-known works. Thought to be some of the well-known and influential authors of all time, Tolstoy is greatest identified for his two masterpieces, Battle and Peace and Anna Karenina. However do you know that he additionally tried his hand at composition? He wrote only one musical work, titled ‘Waltz in F main’, when he was youthful and contemplating pursuing music as a career. Tolstoy’s private secretary, Nikolai Gusev, acknowledged in his memoirs that “for Tolstoy, music was not an amusement however an vital enterprise in life”, as Tolstoy was “a very good musician and composer”.

7. Maya Angelou

   

   American author and poet Maya Angelou, most well-known for her inspirational writing and groundbreaking civil rights activism, was an avid music lover. Within the early Fifties – a decade earlier than she would publish her first piece of writing – she was an aspiring singer and dancer with a following within the nightclubs of San Francisco. Then writing took over her life, however the connection she felt to music, track and dance could be heard in her rhythmic, melodious poetry.

8. Henry David Thoreau

   

   Nineteenth-century American essayist, poet and thinker Henry David Thoreau championed the worth of music alongside his main transcendentalist values. Finest identified for his e book Walden, which advocates simplifying life and connecting with nature, he wrote this in his journal, in an excerpt from an 1857 entry. He recognised the facility of music to offer solace, confidence and peace to those that pay attention, simply as nature so usually does.

9. Mary Oliver

   

   Much like her transcendentalist forefather Thoreau, American poet Mary Oliver was identified primarily for writing about her deep reference to nature. She, too, was an admirer of music, as evident on this citation of hers, which speaks to the unparalleled energy of music to precise what phrases and sentences by no means may.

10. Jack Kerouac

    

    The American novelist and poet who pioneered the Beat Technology, Jack Kerouac, stated it most succinctly with this straight-forward, timeless quote. The creator of On the Highway was famously influenced by jazz music in his poetry, even as soon as declaring, “I wish to be thought-about a jazz poet blowing a protracted blues in a day jam session on Sunday.” The improvisatory, rhythmic and free nature of jazz within the Fifties appealed to Kerouac’s personal writing model and private values. He wasted no time attending to the center of why all of us love and gravitate in the direction of music – or, as he places it, “the one reality.”