Musical Resolution Quotes

The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.

I am the rest between two notes which are somehow always in discord.

Anything that's resolvable is boring, musically. And if it's too chaotic, you don't feel tension; it's chaos.

Music, as long as it exists, will always take its departure from the major triad and return to it. The musician cannot escape it any more than the painter his primary colors or the architect his three dimensions.

Beethoven's music tends to move from chaos to order, as if order were an imperative of human existence.

With film music, endings are often more difficult than beginnings, because a beginning is an underline, a way of exciting a moment, and then you have to find a way to dissipate that.

A song sometimes ends up with its own internal logic.

Discord oft in music makes the sweeter lay.

There are certain parts of chords that resolve things and tie a bow, and others that keep things open and unanswered.

I like it when songs develop in some way. Four minutes usually isn't enough time for something to develop musically.

I think dissonance in music makes you think. It isn't, 'Oh, that's a pretty melody I can whistle.' You have to sit down and listen to tell it apart from other things.

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.

My songs tend to sprint toward some epiphany and then explode.

There should always be some sort of conclusion or climax to your solos.

Therefore we well observe that the title of perfect cadence is attached only to a dominant that progresses to the main tone, because this dominant, which is naturally contained within the harmony of the main tone, seems, when it progresses to it, to return as if to its source.

When you get up, the night and day is a contradiction. But you get up at 4 A.M. That first blush of blue is where the night and day are trying to find harmony with each other. Harmony is the notes that Mozart didn't give you, but somehow the contradiction of his notes suggest that. All contradictions of his notes suggest the harmony.