It is part of our lives, in a way, that we cannot wake up in the morning and go through life without music and without having this essential aspect of it, that music means just as much as eating and drinking or living.
~ Janos Starker, cellist.

Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.
~ Sir Thomas Beecham

I should be sorry if I only entertained them. I wish to make them better.
~ Georg Friedrich Handel (on compliments on “Messias”)

I want this performance to be your best, because in the audience there will be people who will hear this music for the first time in their life, and there will be people who will hear it for the last time in their life.
~ Robert Shaw to the Atlanta Symphony Choir

Next to the word of God, music deserves the highest praise. The gift of language combined with the gift of song was given to man that he should proclaim the word of God through music.
~ Martin Luther