Choral Quotes & Sayings

That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are. — Elliott Carter

I think there is a fascination with choral music in general. — Ed Droste

I'm not a great deductive thinker, but I will admit to having competence in a very wide range of things - not being afraid to try to write about baseball, choral music and dinosaurs in the same week and see connections among them. — Stephen Jay Gould

I have such happy memories of performing in a choir and I don't think I'd have got where I am today without all that experience. So my advice to young singers is to either join your school or church's choir or find one in your local area. Choral music at any level teaches you so much about musicianship and blending your voice. — Katherine Jenkins

My father was working on his Ph.D. on Danish choral music - the Danish choral music of Carl Nielsen - so over there to do research. — Pete Docter

When I had my first experiences of choral singing, the dissonance of those close harmonies was so exquisite that I would giggle or I would tear up, and I felt it in a physical way. — Eric Whitacre

Some of the stuff I'm writing is almost like hymns, some of my first singing and choral experiences were in church, the Church of Christ in Hicksville. — Billy Joel

Loving is like music. Some instruments can go up two octaves, some four, and some all the way from black thunder to sharp lightning. As some of them are susceptible only of melody, so some hearts can sing but one song of love, while others will fun in a full choral harmony. — Henry Ward Beecher

When the truth is that there would be no great Western music, and certainly no decent choral repertoire, without the Catholic faith. — Richard Morris

My taste in both is pretty eclectic. I do encourage people to try new and different kinds of tea if they can - there are so many different sorts, and so many, flavored or not, and there's bound to be something you like. The same with choral music, really. — Ann Leckie

Since I first fell in love with choral music when I was 18 and began composing at 21, I've been listening to these recordings of British choirs. I just fell in love with that sound - that pure, clean, pristine sound - and I think it's probably been the biggest influence on my sound. — Eric Whitacre

I did a lot of choral music in high school, and that was kind of my primary, stable outlet for music because I didn't feel comfortable being a soloist. It was a cool, safe space for me musically. — Autre Ne Veut

Oh, I am all for singing. If I had had children I should have hounded them into choirs & choral societies, and if they weren't good enough for that, I would have sent them out, to sing in the streets. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

Of all the arts, music is the one communal art. It requires for its existence extensive cooperation and organization ... Singing together the greatest choral music of all time is the surest way of developing in a community that sense of quality and reverence for beauty, which is the basis of a musical culture ... Entertainment has its place in life just as candies and cocktails have, but health is not built on such a diet alone, nor culture exclusively on amusement. — Edgard Varese

Singing harmony is not the same as singing a part in a choral group, where you know you're going to have to hit this note and then that note. There are nuances that change every day. Maybe today you have a slight cold or voice fatigue, or you've done something and there's a slight difference in your breathing. — Phil Everly

I listen to a lot of choral stuff at home, but I'm also liking Labrinth, Emeli Sande, Tom Odell and Wretch 32. — Laura Mvula

To me singing is a joy. Choral singing is a delight. Welsh Choral singing is more than a delight. The Treorchy Male Choir is the best in choral singing. How then can they be described except in superlatives? They are without equal. — Ronnie Barker

I sang a lot in college - I was in a choral group in college. But, then, when I moved to New York, I really just concentrated on acting. — Callie Thorne

I love music, and I once thought about doing a choral scholarship, but the people put me off. — Rory Kinnear

In the earliest cultures any tie between the dancers is slight. In a higher level the choral dancers almost always touch one another and thus force themselves into the same stride and the same movement. The closer the contact, the stronger is the social character of the choral. — Curt Sachs

You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us. — Stephen Sondheim

I've been kind of listening to the composer Britten and his rendition of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' The opening track is a choral section where all the weird fairies, who are played by kids in the production, sing. It's a crazy opening melody and chord sequence - really amazing. — Dev Hynes

I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner. — Colm Toibin

In the century of jazz we are likely to overlook the emergence of the waltz as a hot and explosive human expression that broke through the formal feudal barriers of courtly and choral dance styles. — Marshall McLuhan

The choral group. I have even begun to master the organ, not so different from Monsieur's piano. I strained to hear the whisper, as Sister Agnes went on with her thought. The audiences prefer children who are young, too young to be out working for themselves. It pleases them to feel as though they're donating to — Lisa Wingate

To hear the Treorchy Male Choir in full throat is one of the great joys of choral music. — Melvyn Bragg

Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses- and he who is good at one is not good any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. — Plato

When I was a girl I didn't know/I was a girl. I thought I was/more of a pigment, a choral tone,/some kind of weather that disrupts everyone's life in the living room. — Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

With vocal and choral music, first and foremost, it's the text. Not only do I need to serve the text, but the text - when I'm doing it right - acts as the perfect 'blueprint', and all the architecture is there. The poet has done the heavy lifting, so my job is to find the soul of the poem and then somehow translate that into music. — Eric Whitacre

The caterpillars are coming. They're coming. As they passed a blunt rolled with marijuana shake around the bonfire, filled plastic cups with beer from a keg in the back of John Anderson's Bronco, snuck cigarettes at the red doors that led to the make-out woods behind school. As they waited on line at the cafeteria for pizza and Tater Tots, warmed up during choral practice, and changed for gym in the locker room. Until Maddie felt something titanic rushing toward the island, gathering steam like a nor'easter barreling toward shore, and the waiting filled with a tingling urgency she knew they all felt. She felt it. Car engines revved harder, highs soared higher, buzzes and crushes burned brighter. "Look." She lifted her palm as the insect inched across. The two lines of blue and red dots on its back glimmered like spots of blood rising after a pinprick. "They're here. — Julia Fierro

The first choral music I remember hearing was Handel's 'Messiah' when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast it over the radio. — Dave Brubeck

I love making people sing. I love group singing, sacred harp singing, choral singing, recordings of people singing sea shanties, work songs, prison songs - how people just sang to get through things. — Matana Roberts

I enjoy my family a lot. I have active teenagers, and they're in soccer and choral events. — Linda Sue Park

Well, I loved singing in the chorus, and there was some connection for me between gospel and choral music. — Neil Diamond

For at the hour of death you became a celebrated film star, it is a moment of glory for everyone, when the choral music scales the top notes. — Clarice Lispector

A choral dance: an attempt to impose upon a chance gathering of a few dozen guests a communal feeling. — Curt Sachs

The whispers of shared ecstasy are choral. — George Steiner

That not-knowing might seem awful but it's not that bad because she knew lots of things in the way nobody teaches a dog to wag his tail or a person to feel hungry; you're born and you just know. Just as nobody one day would teach her how to die: yet she'd surely die one day as if she'd learned the starring role by heart. For at the hour of death a person becomes a shining movie star, it's everyone's moment of glory and it's when as in choral chanting you hear the whooshing shrieks. — Clarice Lispector

The oldest form of the Choral Dance is the circle. Even the chimpanzees dance in a circle, and people of every continent still do it. — Curt Sachs

These are thy glorious works Parent of Good, Almighty, thine this universal Frame, Thus wondrous fair; thy self how wondrous then! Unspeakable, who sitst above these Heavens To us invisible or dimly seen In these thy lowest works, yet these declare Thy goodness beyond thought, and Power Divine: Speak ye who best can tell, ye Sons of light, Angels, for ye behold him, and with songs And choral symphonies, Day without Night, Circle his Throne rejoicing, ye in Heav'n, On Earth join all ye Creatures to extoll Him first, him last, him midst, and without end. — John Milton