Previn Quotes & Sayings

What most of us want is to be heard, to communicate. — Dory Previn

When I composed, I heard my music played by the orchestra within days of completion of the score. No master at a conservatory, no matter how revered, can teach as much by verbal criticism as can a cold and analytical hearing of one's own music being played. — Andre Previn

Imagine the talented love-child of Andr Previn and Lucille Ball. — Scott Simon

John Williams is, without question, talented. He writes very good scores and very good melodies and all that. — Andre Previn

The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always graver than its performance - whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being played. — Andre Previn

Cry for the soul that will not face the body as an equal place. — Dory Previn

There are a million things in music I know nothing about. I just want to narrow down that figure. — Andre Previn

In 1973, I broke off from the therapy and decided I could go through one of those episodes on my own, in my house. I found there is no real need to be locked up. I found that I was able to use that kind of awake dreaming that you go into during insanity and look at it and live with it and relate to it and become friends with it. — Dory Previn

I stuck around in Hollywood for too long. I was there a long time, and when I left, I was smart enough to realise that what I was leaving was not just the movie business. I wanted to get rid of the whole atmosphere. — Andre Previn

Leaving something unnamed makes it quite literally unspeakable: a void, an absence, a taboo. — Peggy Orenstein

The extraordinary mystique of hers made you think she lived on rose petals and listened to nothing but Mozart, but it wasn't true. She was quite funny and ribald. She could tell a dirty joke. She played charades with a great sense of fun and vulgarity, and she could be quite bitchy. — Andre Previn

A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people. — Andre Previn

It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail. — Vladimir Nabokov

I was raised with fear of God, guilt over Jesus, and terror of the Devil. — Dory Previn

I have a great many shortcomings, but writing for something on time has never bothered me. — Andre Previn

Things are perfect only in the eye of the beholder. It's the uniqueness that drives us. Life isn't about what is perfect for everybody else; it's about what is perfect for you. — A.E. Woodward

You can chase a Beethoven symphony all your life and never catch up. — Andre Previn

I don't write things that are wildly abstractly atonal. — Andre Previn

I don't even have a cell phone. I don't know how they work. — Andre Previn

I found that jazz musicians, possibly more than their classical counterparts, wear long-standing friendships easily and gracefully. — Andre Previn

As you build your lives, for yourselves and others, you will come to rest upon certain principles. Central to my life has been a verse in the Holy Quran which addresses itself to the whole of humanity. It says: 'Oh Mankind, fear your Lord, who created you of a single soul, and from it created its mate, and from the pair of them scattered abroad many men and women'. I know of no more beautiful expression about the unity of our human race - born indeed from a single soul. — Aga Khan

People who don't do jazz think it's black magic. But really, it's just a matter of getting used to it. It's fun to gamble. The trick is not to fall back on the things you've done before. — Andre Previn

The moment you orgasm, I want you to cry out husband, okay? — Chance Carter

I run around so much that I finally reasoned that composing is the one musical endeavour which you can do anywhere, anytime. — Andre Previn

I admire Elliott Carter endlessly. But I have no ambitions to emulate him. — Andre Previn

Beware of barking at underdogs; don't fight with people who have nothing to lose. — Dory Previn

Now produce your explanation and pray make it improbable. — Oscar Wilde

I finally wasn't interested in writing music that played while actors talked. — Andre Previn

Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling. — Andre Previn

I've always wanted to be a part of that experience of writing to an audience that is just starting to fall in love with books. When I felt that my writing for adults had become cemented, I decided to write a YA series. — Sarah Mlynowski

When you're working with music that is invariably better than you are, it's difficult to become swell-headed. — Andre Previn

I was always afraid to write music. — Dory Previn

I've had the healthy and sobering experience of constantly working with music that is invariably better than any performance of it can be. — Andre Previn

I'm on very good terms with all my former wives. — Andre Previn

What I've tried to do is bring the madness out in the open. Keep it under wraps, and it erupts into wars and violence. — Dory Previn

At MGM, you knew you were going to be working next year; you knew you were going to get paid. But I was too ambitious musically to settle for it. And I wanted to gamble with whatever talent I might have had. — Andre Previn