Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason we are inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently, when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the mind to sleep.
Interpretation
Beauty in music is often misunderstood as mere comfort, while true beauty can challenge the mind.
In this quote, Charles Ives emphasizes the difference between superficial beauty in music and a deeper, more thought-provoking experience. He suggests that many familiar sounds are considered beautiful simply because they are comfortable and easy to listen to, while true musical beauty may provoke thought and engagement, even if it initially seems challenging or unfamiliar to the listener.
In practice
A music teacher might use this quote to encourage students to explore diverse musical styles.
All melodious poets shall be hoarse as street ballads, when once the penetrating keynote of nature and spirit is sounded-the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat, which make the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood and the sap of the trees.
But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.
One thing I am certain of is that, if I have done anything good in music, it was, first, because of my father, and second, because of my wife
A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it?
In some century to come, when the school children will whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones--when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic is now--perhaps then these borderland experiences may be both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense
Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's. The meaning of 'God' may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls in the world
With their souls of patent leather, they come down the road. Hunched and nocturnal, where they breathe they impose, silence of dark rubber, and fear of fine sand.
Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.
Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory.
Architecture is not based on concrete and steel, and the elements of the soil. It's based on wonder.
Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.
O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
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