Valley of shadows“When walking through the valley of shadows, remember, a shadow is cast by a Light.” – H. K. Barclay Cited at: QuotationsBook
Why we readWe read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel—or have done and thought and felt; or might do and think and feel—is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become. A person who had never known another human […]
Schumann as a studentSchumann studied with Dorn, the conductor at the civic theatre. Dorn recalled: Having completed exercises in figured-bass realization, chorale harmonization, and canon, teacher and student moved on to double counterpoint. Intrigued by the mysteries of this discipline, and reluctant to tear himself away from his desk, Schumann once requested that his lesson take place in […]
Playing with fantasy“Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.” – Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology Quoted at QuotationsBook
Brahms on inspirationJohannes Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann. whom he greatly admired: It is from you that I am constantly learning that one cannot obtain vital force out of books, but only out of one’s soul. One must draw inspiration not from without, but from within. Cited in: Goss, Madeleine & Schauffler, Robert (1943) Brahms The Master. […]
Vaughan Williams on Hubert ParryVaughan Williams studied composition with Dr. Hubert Parry at the Royal College of Music, London. Vaughan Williams recalled: Many … entirely misunderstood Parry; they were deceived by his rubicund bonhomie and imagined that he had the mind, as he had the appearance, of a country squire. The fact is that Parry had a highly nervous […]
Music is a mysterious form of mathematicsMusic is a mysterious form of mathematics whose elements are derived from the infinite. Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes. There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in […]