Musicon / Musical education / Shostakovich: the power of music is to arouse emotions
-Shostakovich: the power of music is to arouse emotions
No description—however brilliant—can give a true idea of the power of music. Words cannot rival it in appeal and impact.
This is only natural: If music expressed just as much as speech, it would be unnecessary. Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment—and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings which words are powerless to express and which are unattainable in painting and sculpture.
Leo Tolstoi, who on several occasions tried to give a definition of music, finally decided to call it ‘the stenography of the emotions.’ Indeed, music reigns over the emotions, whose interplay it is capable of conveying with far greater force and vividness than all other arts.
From Shostakovich, The Power of Music
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