Robert Fripp Music Quotations

Business logic and musical logic are utterly incompatible.

The concern of the musician is to play the music. It is there demanding to be given sound to.

I recommend my students not to be professional unless they really have to be. I tell them, 'If you love music, sell Hoovers or be a plumber. Do something useful with your life.'

Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence.

To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.

What we hear is the quality of our listening.

Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it's a necessity in ones everyday performance.

Music can be transformative, utterly transformative. The act of music is utterly transformative.

The spoken form is in fact a very restrained representation of what is possible in the musical language.

My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility.

Being a professional musician doesn't mean you spend 12 hours a day playing music. It means you spend up to 12 hours a day taking care of business, dealing with litigation, with the various characters who've stolen your interests, or fending off hostile lawsuits from former members of the band.

The only reward the musician receives is music: The privilege of standing in the presence of music when it leans over and takes unto its confidence. As it is for the audience. In this moment everything else is irrelevant and without power. For those in music, this is the moment when life becomes unreal.

To me, art is the capacity to experience one's innocence: craft is how you get to that point. Maturity in a musician would be the point at which one is innocent at will. At that point the relationship between music and the musician is direct and reliable. The relationship with music is always mysterious: when it works, you can never tell. You can never guarantee when it's going to work. You can only to put yourself in a place where it's more likely to happen.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on?