From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, The substance of my
dreams took fire. You built
cathedrals in my heart, And lit my
pinnacled desire.
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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.
Whether the angels play only Bach in praising God I am not quite sure; I am sure, however, that en famille they play Mozart.
Karl BarthYou play Bach your way and I'll play him his way.
wanda landowskaBach on the wrong notes.
Von dem Bach is so clever he can do anything, get around anything.
erich von dem bachI feel about Keaton the way an organist thinks of Bach.
marty feldmanThe prerequisite of contrapuntal art, more conspicuous in the work of Bach than in that of any other composer, is an ability to conceive a priori of melodic identities which when transposed, inverted, made retrograde, or transformed rhythmically will yet exhibit, in conjunction with the original subject matter, some entirely new but completely harmonious profile.
Glenn GouldI think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. I really can't think of any other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, is valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that -- its humanity.
Glenn GouldThe worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life.
helen hayesVous me priez de vous dire…S'il est vrai que l'acte de foi de tout ce qui prétend aimer l'art élevé et sérieux soit celui-ci:;: "Il n'y a pas d'autre Dieu que Bach, et Mendelssohn est son prophète"?
hector berliozEinstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky . The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrant nude differs from a nude by Manet.
Arthur KoestlerB. B. King is no match for Johann Sebastian Bach.
ilana mercerA great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That's how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it.
dmitri shostakovichEinstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky. The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrandt nude differs from a nude by Manet .
Arthur KoestlerB. B. King is no match for Johann Sebastian Bach.
He is terribly rare. He is like Bach , who in his time had a great concentration of ability, essence, knowledge, a spread of music. Astaire has that same concentration of genius; there is so much of the dance in him that it has been distilled.
The neo-conservative critics of leftist critics of mass culture ridicule the protest against Bach as background music in the kitchen, against Plato and Hegel, Shelley and Baudelaire, Marx and Freud in the drugstore. Instead, they insist on recognition of the fact that the classics have left the mausoleum and come to life again, that people are just so much more educated. True, but coming to life as classics, they come to life as other than themselves; they are deprived of their antagonistic force, of the estrangement which was the very dimension of their truth.
herbert marcuse