Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What is a good performance? It lies in the hands and head of a performer... the shortest way between two people is not a straight line.
I do not write experimental music. My experimenting is done before I make the music. Afterwards it is the listener who must experiment.
These wealthy people were very interested in contemporary music. They wanted to help diffuse it and get it to be known to other people.
I truly thought I was going to be in pop music. And then I joined a choir to meet girls, and everything changed in the first rehearsal.
Above all things, I must not get angry. If I do get angry I knock all the teeth out of the mouth of the poor wretch who has angered me.
A Schubert song, the A-major chord at the opening of Wagner's 'Lohengrin' - such incredible beauty is a mystery, the divinity of music.
The artist must yield himself to his own inspiraton, and if he has a true talent, no one knows and feels better than he what suits him.
It is not enough that the artist should be well prepared for the public. The public must be well prepared for what it is going to hear.
In an era of magic conveniently available at the touch of a button, new music should on principle represent something akin to 'danger'.
You know, my career hasn't exactly been the sort of thing that usually happens to film composers, but I sure am glad it happened to me.
With electronic music, you are not confined to the acoustics of a concert-hall, and that inspired me to bring my performances outdoors.
In the original novel [ Anthem], the story unfolds in the mind of a single character. Maybe that's why Ayn Rand called the work a poem.
Cartoonist Walt Disney has made the twentieth century's only important contribution to music. Disney has made use of music as language.
Laugh often friends tho' passing years bring, sometimes, smiles and, sometimes, tears, for mirth forever warms and cheers. Laugh often!
May every memory that you share Of dreams you've seen come true, Help make this special anniversary day A happy one, for the two of you
If I could choose the perfect Dad There's no one I would rather Have Dad, than you Dad Coz you go further, Father Happy Birthday Father
A concert is a concert is a concert is a concert. An album is an album is an album is an album. Musically, both have nothing in common.
Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.
Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.
I'm obsessed with low end, its kind of my religion. In a way it has given me a chance to explore more than I have in any other project.
The idea of the record is that it's a statement for working with a group, of a collaborative work. That should be visible in the music.
Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.
It's unnecessary and destructive to think of oneself at all. People ask me, 'What do you think of yourself as?' My answer is, 'Nothing.
I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.
Can't believe the number of tracks I get sent every day now. Everyone is at it! There's no way you can keep up and I have two A&R guys!
Divorce is one of the most financially traumatic things you can go through. Money spent on getting mad or getting even is money wasted.
Efforts to reform are often met with resistance because the system always tries to fall back to the status quo and what is comfortable.
You can't have personal investors anymore because it's too expensive, so you have to have corporate investment or a lot of rich people.
I was essentially trained by Oscar Hammerstein to think of songs as one-act plays, to move a song from point A to point B dramatically.
One must not make oneself cheap here - that is a cardinal point - or else one is done. Whoever is most impertinent has the best chance.
Except for the violin pieces and a few of my orchestra pieces, all of my works from the Passacaglia on relate to the death of my mother.
I never learned to read or write music. Never wanted to fool with scales. That was boring, forced. The music I heard was free - flowing.
I love coffee, I love tea, I love the Java Jive, and it loves me. Coffee and tea and the Java and me, A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup.
I wish to share and pass down some of my generation's traits, and encourage young people to create their own art, music, and literature.
The music of the Gypsies belongs in the sphere of improvisation rather than in any other, without which it would have no power to exist.
The success of our operas rests most of the time in the hands of the conductor. This person is as necessary as a tenor or a prima donna.
Conformism is so hot on the heels of the mass-produced avant-garde that the 'ins' and the 'outs' change places with the speed of mach 3.
If you get rid of music, images, videos, words and literature from the smartphone, you just have a simple phone that would be worth $50.
When you're on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn't exactly a sound - it's a hum, like the streets.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.
To George Gershwin, on refusinghim as a pupil: You would only lose the spontaneous quality of your melody, and end by writing bad Ravel.
The sound and just the fact that it was different from the piano, yet it still had some familiarity [made my fascinated with accordion].
I want to be able to depict in music a glass of beer so accurately that every listener can tell whether it is a Pilsner or a Kulmbacher.
I have inherited my father's sense of humour about myself. It's a lot more pleasant to make fun of yourself than when someone else does.
Our age of mechanization leads along a road ending with man himself as a machine. Only the spirit of singing can save us from this fate.
I do feel a commitment to this art form and to my father's teaching, and I think the older I get I'm feeling that more and more strongly.
The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.
There are two contrary impulses which govern this man's brain-the one sane, and the other eccentric. They alternate at regular intervals.
I don't have ideas so much as there are things which constantly evolve... there are various threads or layers, if you like, which change.
I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.