Other Classical Music Composers Quotes & Sayings

True drama can be conceived only as resulting from the collective impulse of all the arts to communicate in the most immediate way with a collective public ... Thus especially the art of tone, developed with such singular diversity in instrumental music, will realize in the collective artwork its richest potential
will indeed incite the pantomimic art of dancing in turn to wholly new discoveries and inspire the breath of poetry no less to an undreamed-of fullness. For in its isolation music has formed itself an organ capable of the most immeasurable expression - the orchestra. — Richard Wagner

People look forward to weekends for connections, revisions and separations even though many of these activities are accompanied by bruises and even a spot of blood, for excitement runs high on Friday or Saturday. — Toni Morrison

Probably, on some subconscious level, I was motivated by not wanting to spoon-feed any similar flavors. — Feist

Bach's simple and basic themes ultimately engage and appeal to my adolescent side while the seemingly complex arrangements, though perhaps patronizingly in some cases, also reflect my juvenile perception of what looks and sounds 'grown-up,' intelligent, refined and sophisticated. There were few composers and musicians in my youth that I could say understood me and really got me, almost all were classical. J. S. Bach was one one of them. — Anastasia Lily

Having considered Handel's tumultuous opera career and his first term at Covent Garden in the 1730s, perhaps we may dare to suggest he was one of the foremost pioneers in establishing autonomy within the traditional system of music patronage, notwithstanding his efforts to become an independent impressario often proved disappointing. — E.A. Bucchianeri

His charms worked, for though the bullets flicked close none hit him. He was the tiger of Mysore, he could not die, only kill. — Bernard Cornwell

I grew up on Bach and Beethoven, and now I'm listening to more modern composers who I can't even name. But since I'm constantly doing music, it's difficult to have that quality time to listen to music and do classical stuff. — A.R. Rahman

I believe the media pretty much dictates the way relationships are handled, even in the way we handle ourselves. Abuse, cheating, threesomes, it's inspired by music and television. Irresponsible artists and writers with a hidden agenda, just working against the moral fabric that God intended for us to have. — Tony Gaskins

I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain ... In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar. — Richard Feynman

Beethoven introduced us to anger. Haydn taught us capriciousness, Rachmaninoff melancholy. Wagner was demonic. Bach was pious. Schumann was mad, and because his genius was able to record his fight for sanity, we heard what isolation and the edge of lunacy sounded like. Liszt was lusty and vigorous and insisted that we confront his overwhelming sexuality as well as our own. Chopin was a poet, and without him we never would have understood what night was, what perfume was, what romance was. — Doris Mortman

History's greatest composers world be rolling in their graves if they knew that their beautiful compositions were reduced to distorted hold music. — Michael P. Naughton

I went to Hollywood. I put the action in Hollywood. I watched a lot of movies, maybe 100 or something close to that. I have tons of DVDs now at home. I don't know what to do with them because they're not useful anymore. My kids never watched them. I read a lot of autobiographies, listened to a lot of music by classical era composers like Franz Waxman, Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman and Leonard Bernstein. I listened to only that kind of music the entire time I was writing, even at home. — Michel Hazanavicius

Copland was one of the first American composers to forge a truly modern style of American classical music while also making use of American popular music - including jazz. — Terry Teachout

Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also. — Yo-Yo Ma

I had great inspiration from a Japanese composer named Toru Takemitsu. He wrote over 90 film scores and a lot of concert music, a lot of classical music, and he gave me a lot of inspiration, as well as composers from other countries. — Howard Shore

If you look at the history of music, you have classical composers, church music, pop music, etc. Music that's existed for centuries. I think there are some songs that are close to immortal. They will last longer than we will in this lifetime. — Mike Love

You think about, like, [20th-century classical composers] Alban Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern sitting around in some living room in Vienna and being like, "We are the end of music. We are the end of this tradition. Music is done." — David Longstreth

Best of children, sisters arm-in-arm, we must bear what the gods give us to bear
don't fire up your hearts with so much grief. No reason to blame the pass you've come to now. — Sophocles

If you're not in 'The Washington Post' every day, you might as well not exist. — Newt Gingrich

Andres Segovia literally created the genre of classical guitar, which hadn't existed before around 1910. There was flamenco, which he borrowed from, but he actually arranged the works of Mozart and other classical composers for guitar, something that had never been done before ... Segovias' style is not slick or contrived, but it's still very clean and his timing is impeccable ... it's got a feeling of casual elegance, as if he's sitting around the house in Spain with a jug of wine, just playing from the heart. — Roger McGuinn

I lay back and tried not to think of the minutes passing. Just yesterday we had a wealth of them. Now each was a drop of heartsblood lost. — Madeline Miller

On one hand you have a string quartet, which is not a symphony. On the other hand is you have me sampling them and making it sound like there is many more people playing, so the whole notion of, kind of, sampling applied to classical music is very intriguing to me because composers throughout history have borrowed motifs and quotes from one another. — DJ Spooky

We might think then of rhetorical production as an extended intentional state in which rhetoric emerges from the dynamic, ongoing intra-actions of human and nonhuman entities all projecting toward each other. — Anonymous

Handel's yearning for independence from the traditional chains of patronage and his persistence in monitoring his productions resulted with unique developments concerning Baroque 'opera seria'; however, paradoxically his personal obsession to obtain complete artistic freedom generated disastrous side-effects that eventually impeded the progress of opera in London. — E.A. Bucchianeri

In Ky's eyes is such complete love and hunger that it goes through me like the sharp, high note of a bird in the canyon, echoing all the way through my body. I am seen and known, if not yet touched. The — Ally Condie

Reading for me will be a combination of books, magazines, Tumblr and just kind of the Web in general on the iPad. — David Karp

Concert pianists get to be quite chummy with dead composers. They can't help it. Classical music isn't just music. It's a personal diary. An uncensored confession in the dead of night. A baring of the soul. Take a modern example. Florence and the Machine? In the song 'Cosmic Love,' she catalogs the way in which the world has gone dark, distorting her, when she, a rather intense young woman, was left bereft by a love affair. 'The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out. — Marisha Pessl

Language is a virus from outer space — William S. Burroughs