Popular quotes about Classical! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Personally, I think young musicians need to learn to play more than one style. Jazz can only enhance the classical side, and classical can only enhance the jazz. I started out playing classical, because you have to have that as a foundation.
Doc SeverinsenThere was a show in Germany called Beat Club, and they had a lot of bands playing live. And I had this master plan, at 11 years old, I wanted to play electric guitar, but I knew... We lived in a small apartment, there was no way that was going to happen. I told my parents I wanted a classical guitar and I wanted to start studying classical guitar. So then a few years later, I think around 16 or so, I started playing electric. But that was my, my plan as an 11 year old. I thought I was so crafty.
Ottmar LiebertI can think and play stuff in classical music that possibly violinists who didn't have access to other types of music could never do. It means I'm more flexible within classical music, to be a servant to the composer.
Nigel KennedyGo back to classical times, say classical Greece. Who drank the hemlock? Was it someone who was conforming, obeying the gods? Or was it someone who was disrupting the youth and questioning the faith and belief? Socrates, in other words. It was Socrates.
Noam ChomskyAnd what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage. And I think that's something that we as classical musicians have underestimated.
Michael Tilson ThomasIf you look at the image [ Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self ], it treads on a kind of popular stereotypical image of the black figure, in both its flatness and slightly comic edge. To take that image as a starting point and to render it in a proto-classical medium, like egg tempera, and then use a repertoire of classical compositional devices to make the picture was a way of setting up an engagement with art history.
Kerry James MarshallIt's not that people don't like classical music. It's that they don't have the chance to understand and to experience it.
Gustavo DudamelApparently, in the Avesta classical period no one would have dreamed of having a spiritual experience without resort to drugs.
Terence McKennaToday is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
Susan SontagMy father is doing a radio program - classical music. He has a beautiful speaking voice and that's his passion in life, his music. My mother lives in Melbourne and is an avid photographer. She's also started writing for a magazine out there and she submits poems, very funny ones, and articles. In some way or other, my family is always doing something with the media.
Olivia Newton-JohnAll good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements - order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious. BOTH SIDES of the artist's personality must play their part.
Henry MooreA bride should look at everything she possibly can...just so she can experiment and see what makes her really feel beautiful or glamorous or classical or whatever she desires to be on that particular day.
Vera WangI wasn't listening to that much classical music - not much more than anything else. I was really lucky to have parents who loved all kinds of music.
Cecile McLorin SalvantI had to listen to the classical music because it calms me down, calms my nerves down.
Novak DjokovicParents...rigidly monitor the selection of television programs...and other forms of entertainment for your family. Foster in your homes a love of knowledge through uplifting literature; wholesome books; selective movies; classical and exemplary popular music; entertainment that uplifts and edifies the spirit and mind.
David B. HaightI learned the cello , but I would still need a massive amount of practice. But I do play classical music, so I understand where that comes from.
Alicia KeysIt has been said that if the opening phrase of a classical minuet can be fitted to the words "Are you the O'Reilly who owns this hotel?" then it was written by Haydn; if it can't then it wasn't.
Gervase HughesOpera Australia has a mix - it produces new work, it produces from the classical repertoire and, particularly in more recent years, it's done those blockbuster musicals which are very lucrative for it and reach an audience that classic opera or a new opera perhaps wouldn't reach, like South Pacific for example.
George BrandisI did everything I could to not bring in any of the - any of the technical things I got from classical into jazz. And I did everything to really base it on my speaking voice and to just not try to make it sound pretty.
Cecile McLorin SalvantOne of the things that benefited me that anyone can learn is classical technique. That shows the orchestra that exists within the instrument.
Steve YoungArtists, whether they're classical musicians or pop musicians, they have always been the reflection of society, and in many ways a healing part of whatever is wrong in society, and I think it's important for us to continue to do that, and I don't see enough of it today.
George DukeWhen I was doing Shakespeare and I had spent a lot of time and effort in trying to become a great Shakespearean actress. That was how I started my career, was in the theater doing Shakespeare. And my ambition was to be a great classical actress. That was what I wanted more than anything. So, I really pursued that in the first four years of my career. And it was an uphill struggle. It really was. Shakespeare's difficult and Shakespeare in a big theater is even more difficult. So, anyway, it was a struggle for me.
Helen MirrenPerhaps if the year was 1447 instead of 1947 I might have hoodwinked my gentle nature by administering her some classical poison from a hollow agate, some tender philter of death. But in our middle-class nosy era it would not have come off the way it used to in the brocaded palaces of the past. Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer.
Vladimir NabokovThe classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death
Nassim Nicholas TalebRunning is the classical road to self-consciousness, self-awareness, and self-reliance.
Noel CarrollHis wardrobe was extensive-very extensive-not strictly classical perhaps, not quite new, nor did it contain any one garment made precisely after the fashion of any age or time, but everything was more or less spangled; and what can be prettier than spangles!
Charles DickensMystery. The strangeness of place so necessary to some creative spirits. A perfect mixture of the classical utopia and the pagan mystery.
Dan SimmonsI'm pretty optimistic about the future of rock... it will be back to composition as in classical music or jazz.
Jimmy PageScience spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature. But it is not science alone that has guided me. I have also been helped by a renewed study of the classical philosophical arguments.
Antony FlewI haven't come across any recent new ideas in film that strike me as being particularly important and that have to do with form. I think that a preoccupation with originality of form is more or less a fruitless thing. A truly original person with a truly original mind will not be able to function in the old form and will simply do something different. Others had much better think of the form as being some sort of classical tradition and try to work within it.
Stanley KubrickI went through eight years of classical piano lessons without being able to read notes. I only have to hear a melody to be able to play it. It used to freak my piano teacher out when he finally noticed that notes don't make any sense to me and that I played by ear.
Liam HowlettWhen I was a young musician, the only option available to pursue secondary education in music was to attend a classical conservatory.
Billy JoelMarx set out to resolve the contradictions and to correct the errors in classical political economy. In this he thought he had succeeded very well. Judging by the sound and the fury of the controversy surrounding his interpretations, he either succeeded too well or deluded himself to the success of his enterprise.
David HarveyClassical music has been based on works people love and come back to for aural comfort.
Leila JosefowiczThe most important thing to do as an artist is to get out of your comfort zone and work with different people: people who can't read a note of music, people who have incredible classical skills, blues and jazz musicians, pop artists, visual artists, dancers and actors. Learn from people who are creative in a different way to you and you'll keep evolving.
Katie NoonanThat is a very good question. I don't know the answer. But can you tell me the name of a classical Greek shoemaker?
Arthur MillerI don't think I'll ever want to do pop music. I think I'll only ever want to do classical crossover because it's something that I love, and pop just doesn't work for me.
Jackie EvanchoYou have to get through the Hamlet hoop as a young actor. Your classical qualifications are based on the quality of your Hamlet. And then, as an older actor, you have to get through the Lear hoop. And I'm approaching the Lear hoop.
Derek JacobiAny material can be treated in any number of ways. Sometimes I might hear something, or someone else might hear something, and say, "Wow, that sounds like classical music." Somebody else might think it sounds like a slow jam.
John DieterichAs I got older though I wanted a life of my own. The classical training was very demanding and thorough. It was a very sheltered existence. Even though I heard blues and gospel on the radio sometimes, it was always back to the piano and study and give recitals.
Nina SimoneIndeed, I find it illuminating to consider to what extent our "classical conditions" for economic growth are satisfied in the current, monopolistic phase of capitalism.
Paul A. BaranBut if you listen to great piano players, both classical and jazz, theres a huge range of dynamics and colors and emotional expression thats possible with the instrument.
Gary Burton'Participant' is the incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics. It strikes down the 'observer' of classical theory, the man who stands safely behind the thick glass wall and watches what goes on without taking part. It can't be done, quantum mechanics says it...May the universe in some sense be 'brought into being' by the participation of those who participate?
John Archibald WheelerOneโs life, liberty and the products of oneโs labor were not intended to be up for grabs by grubby, greedy majorities. Contra classical natural law theory, legal positivism equates justice with the law of the state. However, from the fact that most Americans want others to fund or subsidize their health care, it does not follow that they have such a right. A need is not a right.
Ilana Mercer