Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What's completely insane to me is that people would consider music that's simple to be dumbed-down. Couldn't simplicity be a deliberate, smart choice?
People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence.
So I'll cherish the old rugged cross, Till my trophies at last I lay down; I will cling to the old rugged cross, And exchange it some day for a crown.
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.
There's nothing I like better than talking to kids, just sharing the music with them. To relate to them, you need to play songs they're familiar with.
With just one musician, you can really do an unlimited number of things on the inside of the piano, if you have at your disposal an exploded keyboard.
Ed Koch once said that New York City is where immigrants come to audition for America. That's what happened to my parents; that's what happened to me.
We love 'Fiddler.' We love 'West Side Story.' I want to be in that club. I want to be in the club that writes the musical that every high school does.
We mortals with immortal minds are only born for sufferings and joys, and one could almost say that the most excellent receive joy through sufferings.
Mozart wrote so many works in his thirty-five years that it would take a lifetime just to write out the notes. We literally do not know how he did it.
When we go to sleep ordinarily, we're doing something really private. It's kind of an intimate, private connection with our sort of physical humanity.
Like slaves on the sugar plantations of the Antilles, ...the sugar slaves of southern Louisiana had negative birthrates for as long as slavery lasted.
Coaching is effective self-expression in the coach/client relationship so that you catalyze your clients' manifestation of their own desired outcomes.
Sound is the vocabulary of nature... noises are as well articulated as the words in a dictionary... Opposing the world of sound is the world of music.
I've always liked puzzles, since I was a kid. I like party games, silly games. I loved chess. I enjoy jigsaw puzzles, but I'm not particularly visual.
Proper evaluations of words and letters in their phonetic and associated sense can bring the people of earth to the clear light of pure cosmic wisdom.
I love traditional instruments, though of course they are anachronisms. Satellites run around our planet, but we still play bassoons. It's ridiculous!
I try to make classics. I don't try to make things that aren't good. It's always a pleasure to see that people care about the kind of music I'm making.
Listen with an open ear is the first, most important thing to do. From there, if people feel like learning more, that's when you can kind of go deeper.
When Ronald Reagan was elected I was on a bus traveling with a band in France. I wrote a little arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key.
I never wanted to have a profession, and I've succeeded in not having one, or if I did have one it never paid, or it's never been especially long-term.
There are some people who love being a something, but I also got the gist in the 60's when I grew up that you could be, in the art scene, very diverse.
For the man of talent affects to call his transgressions of the laws of sense trivial and to count them nothing considerd with his devotion to his art.
Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part.
Live performances make music important. Recording is cool and fun, and it's nice to document the thing you made, but the goal in my mind is to perform.
I don't know what will become of this piece. Our brave critics will no doubt charge me with imitating Ravel's Bolero. Too bad - this is how I hear war.
Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.
Who approaches collaboration with agenda in terms of content? The agenda is only in terms of process, which is generosity, listening, careful thinking.
All the same it is being said everywhere that I played too softly, or rather, too delicately for people used to the piano-pounding of the artists here.
Writing music is very, very clinical. You just sit down at a piano, map out a theme and when all the technicalities come together, out pours the music.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, Just like the ones I used to know, Where the tree tops glisten And children listen To hear sleigh bells in the snow.
My first break was in my home country with some pop songs that became hits, writing for French singers Christophe & Francoise Hardy, which became hits.
The fact that most people do not understand and respect the very best things, such as Mozart's concertos, is what permits men like us to become famous.
Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not posses it) and thus need not fear its loss.
I'm really interested in writing a piece of music that will move you, that will really move you. That is really the only reason that I'm writing music.
Sometimes a line enters your head, and you're so grateful for it. You go online to check to see if anyone wrote it before you. You must have stolen it.
History is life; he who has not lived, or has lived only enough to write a doctoral dissertation, is too inexperienced with life to write good history.
The worth of my music will never be guessed or its value to mankind felt until the approach to it is consciously undertaken as a pilgrimage to sorrows.
Just remember, Someone is on your side (our side) Someone else is not While we're seeing our side Maybe we forgot: they are not alone. No one is alone.
I was never much of a reader. I'm a slow reader, which is unusual, because I'm so into language and I love words so much. But it's hard for me to read.
I was raised in farm and ranch communities, and my dad wanted me to be a cowboy like him, but I saw how he struggled in life and wanted more than that.
It is much the best way... to lay the emphasis on the first part of the bar in triple time, and on the first and third parts of the bar in common time.
I think I would like to discover a new root where people don't get bored with people singing boring lines but something exciting. That'd be interesting.
If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach.
We love high-end art, but when you're looking at high-end art in music, a lot of the time, it's appreciated academically, but you can't feel it as much.
All I had was the will and the love for music. I couldn't read music or write it. No connections, no car, no money, no bankroll, no clothes, no nothing.
Naturally enough, I couldn't have foreseen the vast sea change which has come upon that scene as a result of German reunification and associated events.
To me, a song like 'Demons' or the title 'Trouble Will Find Me' are acknowledgments that you can't really plan for life, and you can't plan for trouble.
I made many studio albums and I think the danger of studio recording is that if you do not watch out, you come out with a perfectly sterile performance.
You have to write a good score that you feel good about. At least, you're supposed to. But, if the director hates it, it ain't going to be in the movie!