Quotes by Johann Sebastian Bach

“Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.”

“It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.”

“The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.”

“Music is a mixed mathematical science that concerns the origens, attributes, and distinctions of sound, out of which a cultivated and lovely melody and harmony are made, so that God is honored and ...”

“What I have achieved by industry and practice, anyone else with tolerable natural gift and ability can also achieve.”

“God's gift to his sorrowing creatures is a joy worthy of their destiny.”

“Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.”

“I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well.”

“Dem höchsten Gott allein zu Ehren,Dem Nächsten draus sich zu belehren.”

“Und soll wie aller Musik also auch des Generalbasses Finis und Endursache anders nicht als nur zu Gottes Ehre und Recreation des Gemütes sein. Wo dieses nicht in acht genommen wird, ists keine eige...”

“Bei einer andächtigen Musik ist allezeit Gott mit seiner Gnaden Gegenwart.”

“Not brook, but ocean should be his name (Bach is the German word for brook.)”

“Bach is the immortal God of Harmony.”

“To Bach, notes were not just sounds but the very stuff of creation.”

“To be able to hear J. S. Bach take a melody and improvise what amounts to a spontaneous composition is the most amazing thing I can think of.”

“My hero was J. S. Bach. It was from his works that I came to understand mathematics and, through a greater understanding of math, came to a greater understanding of Bach—the golden ratio, the rise ...”

“One of the most extraordinary things about history's most extraordinary musician is the fact that this man's music, which exerts such a magnetic attraction for us today, against which we tend to me...”

“For Bach, it wasn't finality that mattered in music, it was simply the joyous essence of being.”

“The prerequisite of contrapuntal art, more conspicuous in the work of Bach than in that of any other composer, is an ability to conceive a priori of melodic identities which when transposed, invert...”

“I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be...”