Donald Jay Grout Quote: How Music Shapes Our Soul and Character

"Music is a curiously subtle art with innumerable, varying emotional connotations. It is made up of many ingredients and according to the proportions of those components, it be soothing or invigorating, ennobling or vulgarizing, philosophical or orgiastic. It has the powers for evil as well as good." Dr. Howard Hanson

"We manipulate people like crazy in films and they love it. It’s a tremendous release. Every film composer mixes his experiences with a talent for musical manipulation, then projects that Machiavellian power gut to gut. The big thing about sexy music is the power of suggestion. A song with a porno lyric may cause laughter or embarrassment, but never an invitation to the bedroom. Sensual singing, an insistent beat that builds, suggestive lyrics — these are what turn people on today. One of the biggest motivations in record sales is the bedroom lure, which record companies all know about. Music is used everywhere to condition the human mind. Hitler used Wagner to win the German masses to Naziism. Our future music may be a frequency machine feeding impulses to our nervous system through electrodes or the ear, giving us highs and lows more powerful than any drugs in use today. And much more dangerous, too, because nobody takes musical manipulation very seriously." Eddy Lawrence Manson