Melody Quotes

212 Sourced quotes

Pure and undimmed, thy angel smile
Is mirrored on my dreams,
Like evening's sunset-girded isle
Upon her shadowed streams:
And o'er my thoughts thy vision floats,
Like melody of spring-bird, notes;
When the blue halcyon gently laves
His plumage in the flashing waves.

Park Benjamin, Sr.

Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.

There are two types of composers. Like Stravinsky, some always are aware of the instrument that will be playing a given melody. However, other composers do work out the orchestration only after they have finished composing. I'm like Stravinsky. I always write music with specific instruments in mind.

Each jazz musician when he takes a horn in his hand — trumpet, bass, saxophone, drums — whatever instrument he plays — each soloist, that is, when he begins to ad lib on a given composition with a title and improvise a new creative melody, this man is taking the place of a composer.

Harmony is the inner cadence of contentment we feel when the melody of life is in tune.

Sarah Ban Breathnach

Examining the musical language of Prokofiev in a more detailed way, we must acknowledge that for him melody was always the most important element of music, one that determined the quality of the composition

Finding a woman with a sense of humor had been the one piece of advice his father had given him when he'd first begun to get serious about dating, and he finally understood why his dad had considered it important. If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.

Nicholas Sparks

Poor captive bird! Who, from thy narrow cage,
Pourest such music, that it might assuage
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

From a very early period of my life I have derived the highest enjoyment from listening to music, especially to melody, which is to me the most pleasing form of composition.

I listen to the summer symphony outside my window. Truthfully, it's not a symphony at all. There's no tune, no melody, only the same notes over and over. Chirps and tweets and trills and burples. It's as if the insect orchestra is forever tuning its instruments, forever waiting for the maestro to tap his baton and bring them to order. I, for one, hope the maestro never comes. I love the music mess of it.

The Man with the Child in His Eyes is still one of those things, which right from the get-go … has its own life, because it's just a great song. … For all the time that she or I or anyone spend decorating and creating moods, its actually the key element of what your saying, the melody and the chords which still speak louder than all the stuff around, on a great song.

Come, gentle harp, and let me hold
Communion with thy melody,
And be my tale of sorrow told
To thee, my harp, and only thee.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

My solos are speech-influenced rhythmically; and harmonically, they're either pentatonic, or poly-scale oriented. And there's the mixolydian mode that I also use a lot... But I'm more interested in melodic things I think the biggest challenge when you go to play a solo is trying to invent a melody on the spot.

I don't believe God wants every Christian who plays an instrument to try and form a ministry from it. After all, you don't expect a tire salesman to form a ministry with his expertise on tread design as the basis. -Appalachian Melody

I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom

The chief melody, often in the upper voice, seems to float on underlying waves of sound.

Walter Raymond Spalding

In my skeptical days, people who wanted to appear very spiritual were always telling me to forget my questions, to shove them under the rug and go on in "faith." In fact, some of my friends thought my questions were my own devices to dodge the "real issues." They thought I must be morally decadent to voice such questions. -Appalachian Melody

If his voice hasn't been the melody of my life, it's been the bass line, so subtle you don't notice it until it's missing.

Nature hav no music; nor would ther be for thee
any better melody in the April woods at dawn
than what an old stone-deaf labourer, lying awake
o'night in his comfortless attic, might perchance
be aware of, when the rats run amok in his thatch?

He kissed her, and their souls melted into each other in a melody older than time.

Melissa de la Cruz

I guess it will always be that way until the Church learns how to take lessons from culture and from history, and stops... putting labels of "spiritual" and "unspiritual" on things which God never labeled. -Appalachian Melody

I love the melody of an unknown language, the strange food, all the surprises of a strange town, and my own impatience and curiosity.... I love traveling as others love the gaming table; I anticipate a new place as others anticipate the next number to come up.

Until we learn the language of those outside the Church, the language of their hearts and the language of their minds, we will never be able to communicate properly. -Appalachian Melody

It is at first like some far-away tentative voice intimidated by an excess of joy…This melody, which I've never heard before, is a kind of prayer to happiness, an entreaty asking fate not to be too cruel, a salutation to happiness and at the same time a genuflexion.

He dreamed of amassing musicians from all over the world in Woodstock and they would sit in a field in a circle and play and play. It didn't matter what key or tempo or what melody, they would keep on playing through their discordance until they found a common language.