"Reading music is something that's inherently hateful to me. It makes music like mathematics"

Robert Quine’s statement taps into a deep and ongoing debate in the world of music: the tension between intuition and formalism, between raw emotion and structured analysis. His description of reading music as “inherently hateful” is not just a dismissal of musical notation, but an indictment of what it can do to the creative process. For Quine, the act of translating music through written symbols detracts from the primal, immediate experience of sound and feeling. The use of the word “hateful” underscores a sense of alienation, notation is not neutral; it is actively opposed to something he values about music.

Quine’s analogy between music reading and mathematics is especially revealing. Mathematics is often perceived as rigid, precise, governed by fixed rules. By equating reading music to mathematics, Quine suggests that turning musical experience into a series of symbols and operations strips it of its visceral and expressive qualities. While mathematics has its own beauty, characterized by logic and patterns, music for Quine is at its most powerful when it flows directly from the emotions and instincts of the creator, unmediated by intellectualization. The experience of playing or composing from notation, in his view, imposes a structure that inhibits spontaneity and the unpredictable spark of creativity.

This perspective resonates in arenas like jazz, blues, and various folk traditions, where improvisation and oral transmission are prized above formal written guides. Many celebrated musicians have developed their craft by ear, relying on instinct and memory rather than notation. Quine’s sentiment is a pushback against the academicization and formal training that can sometimes dominate music education. While reading music can be an immensely useful skill, expanding repertoire and access, for some artists like Quine it remains an unwelcome filter, transforming a living, breathing act into a cold calculation. The fundamental question remains: Is music best approached through heart or through mind? Quine’s answer is clear.