If they say they don't like the way I play Beethoven, then I can swallow that, and maybe they're right. But if they don't like what I've written, then it's about me.
Stephen HoughRead
Unlike sport, music is not about winning or keeping fit or promoting your town or school; it's about celebrating, to a level approaching ecstasy, the deepest human longings.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Music transcends competition, serving instead as a profound expression of human emotions and desires.
In this quote, Stephen Hough emphasizes that music stands apart from sports as it is not about victory or physical prowess but rather about emotional release and connection. He suggests that music allows individuals to celebrate their deepest feelings of longing, creating a space for ecstasy and profound human expression that goes beyond mere competition.
Themes
MusicCelebrationHuman EmotionsLongingsArt
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech at a music festival to emphasize the emotional power of music.
More from Stephen Hough
All quotes βLife is an incurable disease leading to death, but it's also an unrequested gift, which, if we can manage to keep giving it away to others, can keep giving back everything to us.
Stephen HoughRead
All things of beauty can speak to us of God, and I'm very happy to listen to and be inspired by people of every religious background.
Stephen HoughRead
Live in the present moment. The past and future are nonexistent. Only the present can be grasped or, better, embraced.
Stephen HoughRead
In Britten or Berg, there's a tension between the sweet and the sour, between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the tonal and the atonal, the happy and the sad. That, to me, is what all western art is about - that tension. It's why we want to say anything at all.
Stephen HoughRead
There are artists who delight listeners with their wild and daring individuality; there are others who uncover the written score with reverence. There are few who can do both.
Stephen HoughRead
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