Today's Fredlines: February 4, 2009 Archive

Exactly

Posted at 1:27 PM on February 4, 2009 by Fred Child (3 Comments)

My favorite Mendelssohn quote, and one of my favorite music quotations ever:

"People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words. These too seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words."

(For more pics of Mendelssohn, and for more on Mendelssohn as a visual artist...here's an entry from earlier this week.)

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