Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Gayly the troubadour
Touched his guitar.

Gayly the troubadour
Touched his guitar.

Modern recording has made it so that people can spend forever taking shortcuts and making everything uniform, but that strips read more

Modern recording has made it so that people can spend forever taking shortcuts and making everything uniform, but that strips music of what makes it exciting.

I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt read more

I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who was asked to comment on a certain abstract painting, and answered in the negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monkey. 'That's different. For a monkey, it's terrific.'

I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music read more

I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.

Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout.

Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout.

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, read more

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be, 'No.'

Yet half the beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh, as he sits by the river,
read more

Yet half the beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh, as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man.
The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain--
For the reed that grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds of the river.