Musical Poetry Quotes

Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber... they're listening to poetry.

In The Doors we have both musicians and poets, and both know of each other's art, so we can effect a synthesis.

Sometimes, for me, lyrics are derived from poems that I'm working on, and they kind of cross back and forth between the two.

Poetry is a lyrical insinuation. Often, its melodic subtlety kisses the subconscious mind.

The blues is nothing but a story... The verses which are sung in the blues is a true story, what people are doing... what they all went through. It's not just a song, see?

Novelists get to say plenty in their massive tomes; rock singers only get four-minute songs with two verses and a chorus' worth of lyrics, and so there's a real pleasure in accessing the intelligence behind the music, even if it doesn't qualify as 'great literature.'

There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.

'Two Voices,' from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and 'copied it out.'

I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music, but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time.

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!

That was always what I felt was the beauty of Rock 'n' Roll, it was entertainment and showbiz yet it had the idea of the voice of the people, it had an essence to it which was socially motivated. Not that I want to change to world, you know? But it was sort of relevant to real life, it involved the real essence of poetry or the real essence of fine art. But it was also entertainment. That was the real vitality.

He touch'd the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.

Joni Mitchell's someone who has tried to make sense of her own world, sometimes painfully, through song.

A good rapper is an amazing thing to me. It's like a 17th-, 18th-century poet.

For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.

In my opinion, the trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments, which I have named the 'epic' one. It possesses nobility and grandeur to the highest degree; it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst. Directed by the will of the master, the trombones can chant like a choir of priests, threaten, utter gloomy sighs, a mournful lament, or a bright hymn of glory; they can break forth into awe-inspiring cries and awaken the dead or doom the living with their fearful voices.

I think that a song, when it works, never mind a piece of long form music, even a song is something that speaks to itself but has a language all of its own, ideally.

I kind of like the idea of creating my own literature within my albums. I definitely thought about that when I started writing songs.

My songs were influenced not so much by poetry on the page but by poetry being recited by the poets who recited poems with jazz bands.

Music resembles poetry, in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach, And which a master hand alone can reach.

I always respected country music for its narrative and how it's so solid, you can get the picture in your mind.

The trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments... it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst.

Versification is, indeed, indispensable for music, but rhyme, solely for rhyming's sake, most pernicious.

There is no piece of guitar music that has the formal beauty of a piano sonata by Mozart, or the richly worked out ideas and passion of a late Beethoven string quartet, or for that matter the beautiful mellifluous poetry of a Chopin Ballade.