What is music? "God's best gift to man," as Walter Savage Landor said? "The moonlight in the gloomy night of life," as Jean Paul Richterput it? Or perhaps--as Carl Maria von Weber and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow agreed--"the universal language of mankind"? Whatever it is, it certainly "hath charms to soothe the savage breast," as William Congreve famously observed. And it "expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent" (Victor Hugo).

These and more than 400 other striking quotes about music, from musicians, authors, poets, historical figures, and other celebrities, fill the pages of this entertaining, practical little book. Not all are on theserious side; many are deliciously witty: "Her singing was mutiny on the high C"s" (Hedda Hopper); "I can hold a note as long as the ChaseNational Bank" (Ethel Merman); "Donny Osmond has van Gogh"s earfor music" (Orson Welles).