Walter Raymond Spalding Quotes

The Introductory chords dissolve the dream which the music has evoked, and we are back once more in the world of reality.

We realize, and with our inborn equipment can appreciate, the moving power of music; but to define, in the usual sense of the term definition, what music really is, will be forever impossible. The fact indeed that music—like love, electricity and other elemental forces—cannot be defined is its special glory. It is a peculiar, mysterious power; quite in a class by itself, although with certain aspects which it shares with the other arts.

[T]he firmness of structure inherent in the canonic form is perfectly compatible with genuine freedom and poetry of inspiration.

A glance at the score shows how sadly the pedagogue might go astray in judgment of the work, without a hearing of it, and furthermore, the imagination of the hearer must be in sympathy with the imagination of the composer, if he would know full enjoyment: for this symphonic poem provokes swooning thoughts, such as come to the partakers of leaves and flowers of hemp; there are the stupefying perfumes of charred frankincense and grated sandal-root.

It speaks to our feelings and imaginations, as it were by suggestion; reaching for this very reason depths of our being quite beyond the power of mere words.

[T]he rhythm of music, akin to the human heart-beat and to the ceaseless change and motion, which is the basic fact in all life, apeals at once to our own physical vitality.

The significant development of the Harvard Band is chiefly attributable to the artistic skill and enterprise of Leroy Anderson. Anderson has a remarkable inborn sense of rhythm and magnetic authority as a conductor. While in college he was a ranking student in the Department of Music and has no small skill as a composer, as may be seen from his exciting potpourri Wintergreen for President, including tunes by Gershwin and some of his own.

[A] knowledge of Bach is the beginning of musical wisdom.

Beginning with Beethoven, however, composers began to exhibit great freedom in the application of Sonata-Form.

In Schubert we do not look for the development of a complicated plot but give ourselves up unreservedly to the enjoyment of pure melodic line, couched in terms of sensuously delightful tone-color. The transitional passage of the Recapitulation (measures 231–253) illustrates Schubert's fondness for modulation just for its own sake; we care not what the objective point of the music may be—enthralled, as we are, by the magical shifts of scene.

Thus a very etherial, magical quality of tone is produced, especially in the upper ranges of the instrument.

[M]usic requires active coöperation by the hearer.

Next to rhythm, modulation is the most stimulating and enchanting element in music. No composition of any scope can be considered truly great unlesss it abounds in beautiful modulations. Certain composers, to be sure, have in this respect more genius than others—notably Schubert, Chopin, Wagner and Franck whose music seems to waft us along on a magic carpet of delight. But just as Unity depends upon a definite basic tonality, so Variety is gained by this very freedom of modulation. … By the perfect balance in his works of these two related elements a genius may be definitely recognized.

[T]he chief melody, often in the upper voice, seems to float on underlying waves of sound.

Schumann claimed that his object in writing music was to influence the imagination of the listeners that they could go on dreaming for themselves.