If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.
Dmitri ShostakovichRead
Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.
Interpretation
Real music inspires and unites people for change and progression.
Dmitri Shostakovich emphasizes the transformative power of music, suggesting that genuine artistic expression can mobilize and inspire communities to strive for revolution and progress. Music is portrayed not just as entertainment, but as a catalyst for social change, rallying people together for a common cause.
In practice
In a speech at a music festival, one might quote this to highlight the role of music in social movements.
If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.
I write music, itβs performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesnβt need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.
What you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.
When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.
The best way to hold on to something is to pay no attention to it. The things you love too much perish. You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear. There's more of a chance then that they'll survive.
Football is the ballet of the masses.
I'd much rather wait till my material is up to par, in my opinion, than rush it just so I can stay in the limelight a little longer.
I have made up thousands of stories; I have filled innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when I have found the true story, the one story to which all these phrases refer. But I have never yet found the story. And I begin to ask, Are there stories?
What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.
Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.
When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived, you know?
To me, this acquirement of nervous, physical, and emotional concentration is the one element possessed to the highest degree by the truly great dancers of the world. Its acquirement is the result of discipline, of energy in the deep sense. That is why there are so few great dancers.
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