Cello Music Bach Poetry Quotes

How could anybody think of Bach as 'cold' when these [cello] suites seem to shine with the most glittering kind of poetry," Casals said. "As I got on with the study I discovered a new world of space and beauty ... the feelings I experienced were among the purest and most intense in my artistic life! ~ Pablo Casals

Oh well,' said Jack: and then, 'Did you ever meet Bach?'

'Which Bach?'

'London Bach.'

'Not I.'

'I did. He wrote some pieces for my uncle Fisher, and his young man copied them out fair. But they were lost years and years ago, so last time I was in town I went to see whether I could find the originals: the young man has set up on his own, having inherited his master's music-library. We searched through the papers - such a disorder you would hardly credit, and I had always supposed publishers were as neat as bees - we searched for hours, and no uncle's pieces did we find. But the whole point is this: Bach had a father.'

'Heavens, Jack, what things you tell me. Yet upon recollection I seem to have known other men in much the same case.'

'And this father, this old Bach, you understand me, had written piles and piles of musical scores in the pantry.'

'A whimsical place to compose in, perhaps; but then birds sing in trees, do they not? Why not antediluvian Germans in a pantry?'

'I mean the piles were kept in the pantry. Mice and blackbeetles and cook-maids had played Old Harry with some cantatas and a vast great passion according to St Mark, in High Dutch; but lower down all was well, and I brought away several pieces, 'cello for you, fiddle for me, and some for both together. It is strange stuff, fugues and suites of the last age, crabbed and knotted sometimes and not at all in the modern ta ~ Patrick O'Brian

I liked Bach played the way people expect Chopin to be played, and vice versa. ~ Eleanor Bron

The miracle of Bach has not appeared in any other art. To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervour, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine; such is Bach, the greatest and purest moment in music of all time. ~ Pablo Casals

I chose the specialty of surgery because of Matron, that steady presence during my boyhood and adolescence. 'What is the hardest thing you can possibly do?' she said when I went to her for advice on the darkest day of the first half of my life.
I squirmed. How easily Matron probed the gap between ambition and expediency. 'Why must I do what is hardest?'
'Because, Marion, you are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can play the 'Gloria'?
'But, Matron, I can't dream of playing Bach ... I couldn't read music.
'No, Marion,' she said her gaze soft ... 'No, not Bach's 'Gloria'. Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you. ~ Abraham Verghese

It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself. ~ Johann Sebastian Bach

I close my eyes, letting the calm wash over me, and putting my bow against the cello's strings, I play. ~ Samantha Armstrong

It was like looking into a dream. An imagination of what seduction in its purest form would look like. This woman was so intense, so deep and utterly sensual, the music flowed right out of her onto the cello and the process moved her so much, she couldn't contain it. It was passion and it pulled him in. ~ Elly Kamari

When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music. ~ Dave Brubeck

If all the music written since Bach's time should be lost, it could be reconstructed on the foundation which Bach laid. ~ Charles Gounod

I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach. ~ Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace. ~ Yo-Yo Ma

Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe. ~ Douglas Adams

Bach's music is really some of the greatest. I think, in some ways, Bach is the most profound composer of all. ~ Joshua Bell

Has it struck you that the music which is regarded as the most sublime in western civilization, which is the music of Bach, is called baroque? ~ Pierre Schaeffer

There is much more to playing the clavier than playing written music. Do you realize with accompanying there is often nothing written out but the bass line
the left hand? There might be a few notations as to a suggested harmony, but it is up to me to fill in the music, at the proper volume, style, and harmony for the soloist
often instantly. I've heard it said that Bach questioned wether the soloist or the accompanist deserves the greatest glory. ~ Nancy Moser

Music always stimulates my imagination. When I'm writing I usually have some Baroque music on low in the background chamber music by Bach, Telemann, and the like. ~ Haruki Murakami

Playing the cello did feel nicely neolithic, or at least a civilized way to process the primitive. ~ Eric Siblin

But music is very important. Music is a tonic for the pineal gland. Music isn't Bach or Beethoven; music is the can opener of the soul. It makes you terribly quiet inside, makes you aware that there's a roof to your being. ~ Henry Miller

Jesus never heard of Beethoven and Bach. Why aren't we playing more country music in church ? ~ Tex Sample

I decided that I wanted to explore all kinds of music with my cello, not just the Western classical tradition. I just wanted to try and expand my vocabulary and bring that different kind of music to my audience. ~ Maya Beiser

I love dancing to the radio every morning, to start the day with such passion. Otherwise, life is too sad. My little daughter and I like dancing to classical music: Bach and Schubert. ~ Anna Mouglalis

If you have a piece by Bach, he often develops the piece to such a high level that you can hardly do much more to it. But Saint-Luc wrote very simple baroque music, and so if you do not embellish it, it just falls apart. It's way too simple. ~ David Russell

My thesis statement would be - Bach didn't write Baroque music. He wrote great music. ~ Chris Thile

It cannot remain unmentioned that so many poorly equipped boys, and boys who have no talent at all for music, have been accepted into the school to date that the quality of music has necessarily declined and deteriorated. And those who do bring a few precepts with them when they come to school are not ready to be used immediately. ~ Johann Sebastian Bach

What is music for? It's to make you feel good. ~ Sebastian Bach

I have some good books of Bach keyboard music transcribed for guitar, and there's always a nylon-string guitar hanging on the wall in my house and a bunch of classical guitar books to grab. I kind of do that just for fun. ~ Rivers Cuomo

APPROACH
Rain is falling. Winter approaches. I drive towards it. In the slow rain. In the semi-darkness. Cello music is playing in the car. The deep sad sound of the cello. It almost swamps me. Routine endeavours to swamp me. The everyday paying of bills.
But I paint men walking in a city of icebergs and crystal. Some of the icebergs are red. I paint a woman swimming in green wavy water. Surrounded by desert mesas. Bright orange in the sunlight. With darker orange for shadows. I paint two people. With purple and pink and yellow and blue circles overlapping the boundaries of their bodies. Dancing.
Life is not ordinary. When I see you tonight I will press my lips to your eyelids. Each one in turn. I will rub my fingertips over the skin on the back of your hands and around your wrists. I will sigh. I will growl. I will whinny. I will gallop into your smile. One sharp foot after the other. ~ Jay Woodman

I've outdone anyone you can name - Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500. ~ James Brown

Whether you love Bach or would rather listen to a composition produced by Kulitta Software, Bach has and will continue to demand the we approach and answer the question, 'what is the art, science and language of music? ~ Anastasia Lily

Music is for people to hear, I can't think of anything else it could be for. Unless you believe in God, and I don't think God really would be all that interested. I'm sure when Bach wrote for the greater glory of God, he really didn't think that God was going to sit down at breakfast and listen to his cantatas. I think he meant for higher purposes than earning a living. ~ Richard Meale

Cello music swelled out from the house, rising higher and higher until it lifted off the earth, sailing toward Venus. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Whether it is Bach or Mozart that we hear in church, we have a sense in either case of what gloria Dei, the glory of God, means. The mystery of infinite beauty is there and enables us to experience the presence of God more truly and vividly than in many sermons. But there are already signs of danger to come. Subjective experience and passion are still held in check by the order of the musical universe, reflecting as it does the order of the divine creation itself. But there is already the threat of invasion by the virtuoso mentality, the vanity of technique, which is no longer the servant of the whole but wants to push itself to the fore. During the nineteenth century, the century of self-emancipating subjectivity, this led in many places to the obscuring of the sacred by the operatic. The dangers that had forced the Council of Trent to intervene were back again. In similar fashion, Pope Pius X tried to remove the operatic element from the liturgy and declared Gregorian chant and the great polyphony of the age of the Catholic Reformation (of which Palestrina was the outstanding representative) to be the standard for liturgical music. A clear distinction was made between liturgical music and religious music in general, just as visual art in the liturgy has to conform to different standards from those employed in religious art in general. Art in the liturgy has a very specific responsibility, and precisely as such does it serve as a wellspring of culture, which in the final ana ~ Benedict XVI

You have got to make new music, that is the way that I look at it anyway. ~ Sebastian Bach

I love music. I still play cello a few times a week. ~ Olivia Culpo

The final aim and reason of all music is nothing other than the glorification of God and the refreshment of the spirit. ~ Johann Sebastian Bach

Like all music, the figured bass should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul; where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamour and ranting. ~ Johann Sebastian Bach

Others, tiring of the sound of Buxtehude and Bach for hours on end, would complain there was no tune. That was exactly the thing he liked best about a fugue, the fact that it could not be sung. A fugue was not singular, as a melody was, but plural. It was a conversation. ~ Kate Grenville

variations on a
theme by christ:

your mouth
is an engine of genius.
it opens w/ snakeskins
of candy
/n bach.
your lip-balm pages
your crybaby bridges
/n the part of it that wants
goes to pieces
every time. ~ Brandon Thomas DiSabatino

Kenji Mizoguchi is to the cinema what Bach is to music, Cervantes is to literature, Shakespeare is to theatre, Titian is to painting: the very greatest. ~ Jean Douchet

I'd studied piano first and switched over to cello when I was about seven. I played mostly chamber and solo classical music. I got really involved with rock music when I was a teenager. I wired up my cello. ~ Tod Machover