Orchestra Music Quotes & Sayings

Didn't know anyone could see it," Samuel said. "You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single note only - and that note unchanging sorrow. I'm not alone in my attitude, Lee. It seems to me that too many of us conceive of a life as ending in defeat. — John Steinbeck

Shared leadership ... is less like a an orchestra, where the conductor is always in charge, and more like a jazz band, where leadership is passed around ... depending on what the music demands at the moment and who feels most moved by the spirit to express the music. — Phillip C. Schlechty

Music is composed on computers and other electronic equipment; producers don't want to spend money on orchestra. — Sivamani

Fact is that I played piano and performed, as a young kid, a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra . Don't forget I was only eleven-years-old and to be on the stage at that age had tremendous impact on me. Basically love for classical music and performing as a kid on the big stage probably led toward this decision, which meant that music is going to be my big love but also my profession. — Herbie Hancock

People clutch onto each other, but the orchestra plays on, because when everything else in life fails, there still has to be music — Anonymous

You probably think of the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instruments
producing a confused agreeable mass
of sound. You do not listen for details because you have never trained your ears to listen to details. — Arnold Bennett

One time I introduced my orchestra as the Shampoo Music Makers instead of the Champagne Music Makers. — Lawrence Welk

So when you enjoy the beats, the rock music - maybe even toned down with an orchestra - you are enjoying the spirit of the black race. And that's what I emphasize to the students. — Warren Jeffs

I admire Tom Ades: he's a brilliant conductor, and he gets just the right hard, brilliant sound from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for Russian music. — Charles Hazlewood

But most of all, she respects Linda for having renounced the product mentality. For having said, 'Enough is enough.' Or at least that's how Linda explained it:

'One day I just said enough is enough to the product mentality, you know? It's not that I'm giving up playing, I just don't need to package it. I devote myself to the music now, not the orchestra. I'm all about the process now. — Laia Jufresa

Farsi Couplet:
Naala-e zanjeer-e Majnun arghanoon-e aashiqanast
Zauq-e aan andaza-e gosh-e ulul-albaab neest


English Translation:
The creaking of the chain of Majnun is the orchestra of the lovers,
To appreciate its music is quite beyond the ears of the wise. — Amir Khusrau

The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. Always an orchestra, and just as music traverses walls, so sensuality traverses the body and reaches up to ecstasy. — Anais Nin

There are two kinds of music. One comes from the strings of a guitar, the other from the strings of the heart. One sound comes from a chamber orchestra, the other from the beating of the heart's chamber. One comes from an instrument of graphite and wood, the other from an organ of flesh and blood. This loftier music I speak of tonight is more pleasing than the notes of the most gifted composers, more moving than a marching band, more harmonious than a thousand voices joined in hymn and more powerful than all the world's percussion instruments combined. That sweet sound of love. — Michael Jackson

If the rhythm or beat of the music changes with a live orchestra, you have to think on your feet. If you feel like you are not on your leg, you have to make a decision to make it look as though nothing is going wrong. — Misty Copeland

Essentially, the [New York] Philharmonic is just like any other orchestra-they all have the spirit of kids, and if you scratch away a little of the fatigue and cynicism, out comes a 17-year-old music student again, full of wonder, exuberance and a tremendous love of music. — Zubin Mehta

I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry. — Leon Theremin

The music for 'The Departed' could have been played by an orchestra, but you make a decision about orchestration based on the context of the film. You want the music to broaden the scope of a film, not just repeat what you're seeing. — Howard Shore

The alarm in the morning? Well, I have an old tape of Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a perfectly transcendent version in Shubert's seventh symphony. And I've rigged it up so that at exactly 7:30 every morning it falls from the ceiling onto my face. — Stephen Fry

It's important as a composer to sit in silence and imagine these complex musical worlds in your head, but it's also a wonderful experience to touch your music and to hear it and hear it in the room with you and to say, you can't have an entire orchestra there, but you'd kind of like to have the orchestra there. — Tod Machover

We are musical notes emanating from the quantum string section of a grand symphonic orchestra. — Kane Freeman

To his orchestra Stop da music, stop da music! You're supposed to follow da music, not chase it all over da place. — Jimmy Durante

What makes games so exciting is that's a whole other- there's all sorts of other considerations on what music is supposed to achieve and what you're attempting to support, it's not uncommon to think of your music and to think of the way your orchestra plays for something like Jack and Daxter where you start with- you know because it has to change tempo and intensity as the action gets more intense. — Mark Mothersbaugh

When I was growing up, in L.A., I went to these schools, Fairfax High School, Bancroft Junior High School, and they had great music departments. I always played in the orchestra, the jazz band, the marching band. — Flea

When I was younger, I used to do that a lot: I would hear a part of a song that would really relax me and then put it on repeat. That would send me to sleep. It was quite obvious classical music, people like Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel. — King Krule

Usually, the murmur that rises up from Paris by day is the city talking; in the night it is the city breathing; but here it is the city singing. Listen, then, to this chorus of bell-towers - diffuse over the whole the murmur of half a million people - the eternal lament of the river - the endless sighing of the wind - the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed upon the hills, in the distance, like immense organpipes - extinguish to a half light all in the central chime that would otherwise be too harsh or too shrill; and then say whetehr you know of anything in the world more rich, more joyous, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes - this furnace of music - these thousands of brazen voices, all singing together in flutes of stone three hundred feet high, than this city which is but one orchestra - this symphony which roars like a tempest. — Victor Hugo

If the souls of lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few to which nought but the refined and exquisite sadness of a violin could do justice. Many might be likened unto common pianos, jangling and out of tune, and some to the feeble piping of a penny whistle, and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin-pot. — Miles Franklin

I never thought that I would write orchestra music, but in fact I did write a group of orchestra pieces. — Paul Lansky

The rhythm of music is very, very important for people with Parkinson's. But it's also very important with other sorts of patients, such as patients with Tourette's syndrome. Music helps them bring their impulses and tics under control. There is even a whole percussion orchestra made up exclusively of Tourette's patients. — Oliver Sacks

I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head. — John Fahey

Every philharmonic orchestra merely interprets the composer. My goal was to create new music by that composer. In doing so, I wanted to find the painter's creative center and become familiar with it, so that I could see through his eyes how his paintings came about and, of course, see the new picture I was painting through his eyes - before I even painted it. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

Whenever I get asked to write orchestra music or music that is for a lot of players, I try to make it a little sad. — Nico Muhly

There is much modern music that is better adapted to a wind combination than to a string, although for obvious reasons originally scored for an orchestra. If in such cases the interpretation is equal to the composition the balance of a wind combination is more satisfying. — John Philip Sousa

In the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra we play such a diversity of music, with 10 arrangers in the band, we don't really worry about whether it's contemporary or not. — Wynton Marsalis

Labs, too, can become machines. In science, it is more often a pejorative description than a complimentary one: an efficient, thrumming, technically accomplished laboratory is like a robot orchestra that produces perfectly pitched tunes but no music. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

As you get older - for example, in our band we have members of our orchestra, like Carlos Enriquez and Ali Jackson and Walter Blanning. I taught them when they were in high school, and now they teach me.I'll regularly call Ali and say, "Man, can you break this rhythm down for me?" Or Carlos was actually our music director in Cuba, and he's been instrumental in a lot of my education, and I started to develop a saying with them, because they tease me all the time - you get older, you have that familiar relationship - I say, "You have to follow your young leadership, too." — Wynton Marsalis

I approach everything as chamber music. Even with Beethoven symphonies, I lead from the violin and basically encourage the orchestra to think of it as a giant string quartet. — Joshua Bell

I wanted the music to be full, to surround us, to lift us like the swell, so I rented a bloody orchestra. You only live once. — Mark Helprin

I tried to bring in the live orchestra like Bjork does. I love the feeling that that music gives me when I just listen to it. I mean it would be awesome to do an entire record like that. But unfortunately that's not my style. So rather than do a record like that I just got inspired by it. — Willa Ford

Music is about communication, and the chemistry between an audience and the orchestra is absolutely essential; the performance does not exist in a bubble. — Charles Hazlewood

I studied music for my first two years in college. When I went to UC Berkeley, I failed the admission requirements to get into the music school there, so I studied communications and public policy, which actually were a greater engine for my career than a musical education would have been. If I had gotten into the music department at Berkeley, I'd probably be a timpanist in an orchestra right now. — Stewart Copeland

The symphony orchestra had played poorly, so the conductor was in a bad mood. That night he beat his wife
because the music hadn't been beautiful enough. — George Carlin

In symphonic music, when you are conducting, you do the same thing. You are feeling the whole orchestra, thinking ahead so you can prepare for a change. — David Amram

It really does look like musical sheets, frayed at the edges, constantly played, coming to you in tidal scores, in bars of canals with innumerable obbligati of bridges, mullioned windows, or curved crownings of Coducci cathedrals, not to mention the violin necks of gondolas. In fact, the whole city, especially at night, resembles a gigantic orchestra, with dimly lit music stands of palazzi, with a restless chorus of waves, with the falsetto of a star in the winter sky. — Joseph Brodsky

It is unlikely you will truly get the feeling of the violin until you have been studying for at least a year -- perhaps even two. Then one day the sheer pleasure of playing the instrument will suddenly flow over you. Perhaps it will be when you hear a fine string quartet. Maybe the revelation will come at the concert of an outstanding string orchestra, or better yet, when you are asked to sit in one made of boys and girls your own age. In any case, you will hear the singing strings clearly -- perhaps for the first time -- as the pure, jubilant spirit of music. — Bill Ballantine

Silken strings composing the harpsichord of life accommodate a score of emotional tidings. An orchestra of linked heartbeats strumming the melodious prose of our collective intones gives rise to sonnets of melancholy, producing an illimitable libretto stretching from the milky dawn of newborn's amaranth life to the speckled sunsets of gentle souls whom we cherish. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Music Doesn't Need Interpreters and Translators — Ellen J. Barrier

Let me say that I've never thought to conduct because the conductor has to think to the music before the orchestra. And the orchestra comes later. For me, it's terrible. — Andrea Bocelli

Right now I just finished writing the music for a Rugrats feature film and the third week of September I go to London, and the Orchestra is going to perform the score. — Mark Mothersbaugh

I sometimes like to think of God as a great symphony and the various spiritual paths as instruments in an orchestra. The gift that you have is like music waiting to be played. You need only to find the instrument that will best bring it out. You alone can never play all the instruments, and your music might not find voice in all the instruments. All you can do is find the instrument that suits you best, play it as well as you can, and add your music to the great symphony of divine creation. — Kent Nerburn

Up the street a song cloud floats by, sagging a bit, but still intact. I walk faster and catch up with it just in time to hear the ending, a symphony orchestra, the sound full and resplendent, and it is one of those times, you know those times every so often when you hear the right piece of music at the right time, and it just makes you think. — Charles Yu

I had no room now for this fear, or for any other fear, because I was filled to the brim with music. And even when it was not literally (audibly) music, there was the music of my muscle-orchestra playing - "the silent music of the body," in Harvey's lovely phrase. With this playing, the musicality of my motion, I myself became the music - "You are the music, while the music lasts." A creature of muscle, motion and music, all inseparable and in unison with each other - except for that unstrung part of me, that poor broken instrument which could not join in and lay motionless and mute without tone or tune. — Oliver Sacks

I think that any artistic decision that is based on whether or not you are going to make money it is not really an artistic decision. It is a business decision. And there are a lot of things that I can do to earn a living and a lot of things that I have already done to earn a living which produce the amount of capital needed to do this project. I came here to spend money on an English orchestra and record my music, so I can take it home and I can listen to it. And... if somebody else likes that kind of stuff, I will make it available on a record so that they can hear it. That is my part of the public service of spending the money to make this event happen. No foundation grant, no government assistance, no corporation, no comittee. Just a crazy guy who spent the money to hire English musicians to do a concert at the Barbican and make an album for Barking Pumpkin Records. — Frank Zappa

Writing orchestra music, you need for the emotional content to come from everyone doing everything together, adding up as it goes, a crowd mentality. — Nico Muhly

I suppose, counting back, if the Beatles had been influenced by music in the same length of time ago - you'd have to put that into better English for me, thank you - they would have been like a banjo orchestra. They would have been doing show tunes. — Jonny Greenwood

I just initiated the project where I write music for somebody else to write the lyrics and also for the orchestra to perform. I've just initiated the project. That leads the project into creating an independent label outside of game music. — Nobuo Uematsu

The waters of the stream played the part of the orchestra, and the sunlight provided the dancers. Every now and then a crescendo of wind highlighted the symphony in the clearing by the creek. — Edward Mooney Jr.

I regard my entire orchestra as one large instrument, and I try to play on that instrument to the fullest of its capabilities. My aim is and always has been to mold the music around the man. I've found out that it doesn't matter so much what you have available, but rather what you make of what you do have - finding a good "fit" for every instrumentalist in the group. I study each man in the orchestra and find out what he can do best, and what he would like to do. — Gary Giddins

From early on, when synthesizers were first introduced into music, I liked the idea that you could get a big sound with them, electronic, but like an orchestra. And I could play it all myself. That was exciting. — John Carpenter

One of the marks of a godly woman is that she takes responsibility for her soul's need for joy and delight. A woman is a conductor, who leads the orchestra of her surroundings in the songs and music of her life. God is a God of creativity and dimension, and so He is pleased when we we co-create beauty in our own realm, through the power of His Spirit.
It was a profound realization when I understood that I could become an artist with my very life. — Sally Clarkson

Some officers seem to love having all the answers and micromanaging everyone around them. This may give them a sense of power, or perhaps it is a matter of feeding the ego. However, observe that the conductor of a symphony orchestra doesn't play all the instruments but enables others to work together to perform a great selection of music. We too need many others to play their parts for the ministry of the Army to be successful. — Steve Hedgren

Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. Hear the music of voices, the song of birds, the mighty strains of an orchestra as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow ... Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Glory in all the facts of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you. — Helen Keller

I listen to the summer symphony outside my window. Truthfully, it's not a symphony at all. There's no tune, no melody, only the same notes over and over. Chirps and tweets and trills and burples. It's as if the insect orchestra is forever tuning its instruments, forever waiting for the maestro to tap his baton and bring them to order. I, for one, hope the maestro never comes. I love the music mess of it. — Jerry Spinelli

The truth of an orchestra is heard when they try to find their common notes before the show. All those strings and tubes and odd plunking things straining in different directions; an orchestra is merely a mob of single-minded maniacs who every so often condescend to work together, and then, mostly, they soar - they ascend - they give us wings.

Then they finish and bow and grumble and stomp off to their grotty little hovels muttering to themselves. Honestly, music is a miracle. You have no idea. — Kelly Gardiner

Ordinary society is, in this respect, very like the kind of music to be obtained from an orchestra composed of Russian horns. Each horn has only one note; and the music is produced by each note coming in just at the right moment. In the monotonous sound of a single horn, you have a precise illustration of the effect of most people's minds. How often there seems to be only one thought there! and no room for any other. It is easy to see why people are so bored; and also why they are sociable, why they like to go about in crowds - why mankind is so gregarious. It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable. Omnis stultitia laborat fastidio sui: folly is truly its own burden. Put a great many men together, and you may get some result - some music from your horns! A — Arthur Schopenhauer

The mysterious manner in which this growing sense of unity commingles with a sense of utter goodness is worth noting. It arises by no effort of mine; rather does it come to me out of I know not where. Harmony appears gradually and flows through my whole being like music. An infinite tenderness takes possession of me, smoothing away the harsh cynicism which a reiterated experience of human ingratitude and human treachery has driven deeply into my temperament. I feel the fundamental benignity of Nature despite the apparent manifestation of ferocity. Like the sounds of every instrument in an orchestra that is in tune, all things and all people seem to drop into the sweet relationship that subsists within the Great Mother's own heart. — Paul Brunton

Deep inside I feel that this world we live in is really a big, huge, monumental symphonic orchestra. I believe that in its primordial form, all of creation is sound and that it's not just random sound, that it's music. — Michael Jackson

Last year in Germany at a town hall in Leipzig there was a game music concert played by the orchestra and some of the Final Fantasy scores were played. This year there is another concert scheduled in the same location, for game music. — Nobuo Uematsu

I think it's a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra - especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music. — Gustavo Dudamel

I've always been fascinated by music and sounds. I was lucky to receive proper classical training as an orchestra player and I'm always learning as a composer, looking to create new flavors and colors. — Lior Ron

What appeals to me about an American music directorship is the involvement of the conductor with the orchestra and the community. I think that's a fantastic thing. In Europe, being principal conductor means merely that you're the person who does most of the concerts. For me, that simply isn't enough. — Jeffrey Tate

I come to New Orleans so often that, one day soon, someone's going to declare me a native. I love the food. I love the music. I serve on the board of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. — Soledad O'Brien

Gioacchino Rossini, the composer of William Tell and many other operas, had a good grasp of the relationship between music and food: "What love is to the heart, appetite is to the stomach. The stomach is the conductor that leads and livens up the great orchestra of our emotions." If — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Well, there's another set forward, you see. Up to now you couldn't stand all this dance and jazz music. It was too superficial and frivolous for you. Now you have seen that there's no need to take it seriously and that it can all the same be very agreeable and delightful. And by the way, the whole orchestra would be nothing without Pablo. He conducts it and puts fire into it. — Hermann Hesse

'American Music' is an inventive, passionate, pithy novel whose major theme is love itself and whose minor theme, music, is an emotional, meaningful counterpoint. Like Count Basie and His Orchestra, this book swings. — Kate Christensen

I love working with an orchestra, but there are many ways to make music. — Howard Shore

The most uplifting music in the world is that of Mother Natures orchestra.
Sit atop a hill or mountain, with a fabulous view and listen ...
Hear the winds song, the birds chorus, and the far off sound of childrens laughter and song and the sounds of life that you can soundtrack to your own playlists. — Michelle Geaney

I always admired very much the virtuosity in Strauss because, really, he's a master of using the orchestra. And I like virtuosity, I must say, even if the taste of the music is not always mine. — Pierre Boulez

Music is the most important thing. I'm thinking of my future. There has to be something new, and I want to be part of it. I want to lead an orchestra with excellent musicians. I want to play music which draws pictures of the world and its space — Jimi Hendrix

Playing in an orchestra is completely different to playing on my own.
Sometimes I played, sometimes listened; instead of waiting my turn, I sometimes interrupted another player, sometimes I argued, sometimes agreed.
My flute is my mouthpiece and I felt as if I was actually joining in a conversation. — Kevin Crossley-Holland

The trouble with women in an orchestra is that if they're attractive it will upset my players and if they're not it will upset me. — Thomas Beecham

Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows ... You name it, he did it! — Billy Taylor

I used to go with him and I'd sometimes play, take over from him. That was my first taste of the music business, I suppose, but I was also in the youth orchestra at Johnston Grammar. — Trevor Horn

The orchestra confides in me about their music director or their conductor, and I've never seen a conductor that's been liked by everyone. — Joshua Bell

A creative America has walls for structure but no ceilings at all. The doors and windows always stay open. No member who wants in is left out. Outsider ideas are invited and celebrated....Each creator grows the revolution. Whatever kind of creator you may be, you are part of the revolution's orchestra, its folk music, chorus, melody, and anthem. — Ashfaq Ishaq

I'm a geek and I'm a nerd, and I can listen into any piece of music. I think, I can usually tell you what orchestra it was, I can usually tell you what hall it was in. I can tell you, obviously who the conductor was, and who the composer was. — Hans Zimmer

Music blows lyrics up very quickly, and suddenly they become more than art. They become pompous and they become self-conscious ... I firmly believe that lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you not only have the music, but you've got costume, story, acting, orchestra. There's a lot to take in. — Stephen Sondheim

My intention always has been to arrive at human contact without enforcing authority. A musician, after all, is not a mili- tary officer. What matters most is human contact. The great mys- tery of music making requires real friendship among those who work together. Every member of the orchestra knows I am with him and her in my heart. — Carlo Maria Giulini

If you can't play all the instruments in the orchestra of story, no matter what music may be in your imagination, you're condemned to hum the same old tune. — Robert McKee

But you don't hold yourself superior to all the judges of music?" she protested.
"No, no, not for a moment. I merely maintain my right as an individual. I have just been telling you what I think, in order to explain why the elephantine gambols of Madame Tetralani spoil the orchestra for me. The world's judges of music may all be right. But I am I, and I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind. If I don't like a thing, I don't like it, that's all; and there is no reason under the sun why I should ape a liking for it just because the majority of my fellow-creatures like it, or make believe they like it. I can't follow the fashions in the things I like or dislike. — Jack London

I know this music from memory, not from the music. — Eugene Ormandy

The smoke detectors began to ring; for they were battery-powered and thus still functioned, just as a record can still be played after the death of every member of the orchestra. — William T. Vollmann

Charles Wallace and the unicorn moved through the time-spinning reaches of a far glazy, and he realized that the galaxy itself was part of a mighty orchestra, and each star and planet within the galaxy added its own instrument to the music of the spheres. As long as the ancient harmonies were sung, the universe would not entirely lose its joy. — Madeleine L'Engle

Today all sounds belong to a continuous field of possibilities lying within the comprehensive dominion of music. Behold the new orchestra: the sonic universe! And the musicians: anyone and anything that sounds! — R. Murray Schafer

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance. — Rachel Kushner

My definition of hip hop is taking elements from many other spheres of music to make hip hop. Whether it be breakbeat, whether it be the groove and grunt of James Brown or the pickle-pop sounds of Kraftwerk or Yellow Magic Orchestra, hip hop is also part of what they call hip-house now, or trip hop, or even parts of drum n' bass. — Afrika Bambaataa

And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away. — Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

I sang 'O Holy Night' with the Vatican orchestra, but also a Blake - a lullaby that William Blake wrote for the Christ child, and I set it to music, and the Vatican orchestra played the music. — Patti Smith

Look at it,' he said, gesturing. 'This window looks down upon hundreds more panes of glass, and behind those panes live thousands upon thousands of lost souls. When I feel cast down and helpless, scores of other men do as well, and when I am bitterly angry at feeling cast down and helpless, countless other people languish in concert with me. When I'm happy, it's the same. It's a bit like ... I used to play chamber music. It's like a vast orchestra. And so I shan't ever be alone. — Lyndsay Faye

About 13-14 years ago, I went back to my alma mater, Fairfax High School, and ran into the music teacher. She invited me to come speak to the kids about the viability of a music career. When I went into the room where I used to play every day in a big orchestra, they had nothing! — Flea

If you think about how long it takes to write a piece of music for an orchestra, it's outrageous to me, outrageous. — Gail Zappa