1998-now

"What is best in music is not to be found in the notes." - Gustav Mahler

1962-1997

"Music that gentler on the spirit lies than tired eyelids upon tired eyes." - Tennyson 

1961

"Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory." - Shelley 

1960

"The music in my heart I bore, long after it was heard no more." - Wordsworth 

1959

"If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it." - Shakespeare 

1958

"Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie."
 - John Milton 

1957

"There's music in the sighing of the reed.  There's music in the gushing of a rill."
 - Lord Byron in Don Juan 

1956

"Here we will sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears."  - Shakespeare 

"Music is well said to be the speech of angels."
- Thomas Carlyle

"Music is God's gift to man, the only art of heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to heaven." - Walter Savage Lander

"In music festivals the object is not to gain a prize nor defeat a rival, but to pace one another on the road to excellence."- Sir Walford Davies