Popular quotes about Classical! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 20
In fact although I have studied in a Conservatory the classical piano, I do not consider myself a classical pianist.
Richard ClaydermanI'm a classical ballet dancer, and at the end of the day I want to be with American Ballet Theater, performing classical ballets.
Misty Copeland... 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 McGuinnThere 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 LiebertA glance at the history of European poetry is enough to inform us that rhyme itself is not indispensable. Latin poetry in the classical age had no use for it, and the kind of Latin poetry that does rhyme - as for instance the medieval Carmina Burana - tends to be somewhat crude stuff in comparison with the classical verse that doesn't.
James FentonBeing a classical musician I'm fascinated with how my colleagues, not just singers, but every musician finds ways to express something else or something new or the same ol', same ol' in classical music. I'm always in dialogue with other musicians at least orally, if I can't be with them and a lot of dead musicians as well. I've learned a lot from dead people on recordings.
Thomas HampsonThe reality for me is simple. When music is written, it is usually categorized as classical. When it is improvised, it can still be called classical if it is an inspired improvisation. In either category, it is still music, and it can be good or bad or simply mediocre.
Dave BrubeckListening to classical music is a journey not a state; it's an activity not a meditation.
Armando IannucciAl-Ghazali is the most important philosophical theologian of classical Islam, and Moderation in Belief is among his most important works. It sets out al-Ghazali's Ash?arite theology with unusual clarity and provides important background for such well-known works as his autobiographical Deliverance from Error and his attack on Avicenna in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. This first English-language translation, with notes that bring out the argumentation and background of the work, is thus very much to be welcomed.
Peter AdamsonI got obsessed with classical music, I got obsessed with Chopin, with playing the piano.
Gary OldmanWe have reversed the usual classical notion that the independent "elementary parts" of the world are the fundamental reality, and that the various systems are merely particular contingent forms and arrangements of these parts. Rather, we say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independent behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole.
David BohmAs for the author, he is profoundly unaware of what the classical or romantic genre might consist of.... In literature, as in allthings, there is only the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false.
Victor HugoEnglish is a forgiving language. It's not like Classical Arabic and it's not like French. You can speak broken English and be expressive and no one will hold it against you.
Elliott CollaWhat is important is that our optical awareness rids itself of classical notions of beauty and opens itself more and more to the beauty of the instant and of these surprising points of view that appear for a brief moment and never return; those are what make photography an art.
Raoul HausmannIt 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 HughesClassical music is a wonderful 1200 year-old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to be human.
Michael Tilson ThomasYou don't need any specialized education and you don't need to know anything about the world in which I work. I think my music should be able to speak to you even if you've never been to a concert of classical music before.
Jennifer HigdonBasically my influences have been American influences. It's been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music. It's like making a stew. You put all these various ingredients in it. You season it with this. You put that in it. You put the other in it. You mix it all up and it comes out something neat, something that you created.
Horace Silverwhen dancing is right, the movement possesss a logic common to us all, an inevitability that takes it beyond the personal and egocentric and makes of it classical art.
Twyla TharpI still play jazz, and I've always got that trumpet very handy, but I'm coming to feel the classical venues are where my main focus is, in the realm of symphonic pops.
Doc SeverinsenWhen 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 MirrenIt's America's classical music ... this becomes our tradition ... the bottom line of any country in the world is what did we contribute to the world? ... we contributed Louis Armstrong
Louis ArmstrongI'm sure there are a few things in my CD collection that might surprise people. I like classical music, the blues, and I'm a big fan of alternative rock.
Brad PaisleyIt is now widely realized that nearly all the 'classical' problems of molecular biology have either been solved or will be solved in the next decade. The entry of large numbers of American and other biochemists into the field will ensure that all the chemical details of replication and transcription will be elucidated. Because of this, I have long felt that the future of molecular biology lies in the extension of research to other fields of biology, notably development and the nervous system.
Sydney BrennerThere's so many different styles and facets of the 360-degree musical sphere to listen to. From tribal to classical music, it's all there. If the bottom was to sag out of that, for God's sake, help us all.
Jimmy PagePiano was - well, all musical instruments were taught in this very rigid, formal, classical method when I was young.
Hugh LaurieI'm a prostitute. Do you know what, it really is basically I just really like to work! I'm thrilled that there's a variety. It's why I got into this business to begin with, because I really don't have the discipline or intellect to have a 9-to-5 job. But I came from a classical music background and I merged that to theatre, it kind of opened up the door to a lot of different possibilities.
Jason GraaeObviously classical music tends to be stuff that is usually at least a hundred years old.
Steve HackettI could have taken the easy life and just done classical, but I felt very strongly about the album, my first pop album, the first time that I'd fused so many influences. I was very proud when it was in the charts in 25 countries at once.
Vanessa MaeI started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since.
Herbie HancockOn horseback you feel as if you're moving in time to classical music; a camel seems to progress to the beat of a drum played by a drunk.
Walter MoersYou 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 LongstrethI started playing classical music, and I still do. I think music ultimately is kind of on a theoretical level, is about collecting and learning as much vocabulary as possible. It's kind of like writing. It's kind of like writing because the more you read, the more you hear people describe things. The more you soak in, as far as vocabulary, the more access you have in order to express yourself accurately and vividly.
Eldar DjangirovI 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 HowlettThe pseudoscience of astrology has no place in magick. Astrology has already died twice: once with the classical gods, and a second time after the Enlightenment. The complete failure of contemporary psychology to create anything other than a vocabulary of intellectual rubbish has encouraged astrology to resurface.
Peter J. CarrollI just really gravitate towards a nostalgia for a time when things were simpler. When beauty was more classical and glamorous.
Emmy RossumIt was my 16th birthday-my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do-write songs and sing them to people. [...] Everything on this record is what I really wanted to say, and I'm back to being the poet I always thought I was.
Stevie NicksI did stand-up for a long time and I did classical theater. As much time as you could spend on a stage will always inform you and your job, as you evolve.
Kevin DurandI love art, I love music. I can listen to Stockhausen and a very experimental, avant-garde approach, and I can listen to Beethoven and have a more classical, traditional approach. Why not be able to do that with film performance?
Nicolas CageI've been extremely lucky to work with Elmer Bernstein, Howard Shore over the years, but I've always imagined films with my own scores, because I don't come from that world or that period of filmmaking. And so how could I make up my own score on a film like this where it isn't necessarily made up of popular music from the radio or the period; it isn't necessarily classical music. But what if it's modern symphonic music?
Martin ScorseseI loved getting classical training in terms of acting. I would've stayed in acting school for the rest of my life if I could have. It was this amazing period of my life where everything was so safe.
Dane DeHaanChess is my profession. I am my own boss; I am free. I like literature and music, classical especially. I am in fact quite normal; I have a Bohemian profession without being myself a Bohemian. I am neither a conformist nor a great revolutionary.
Bent Larsen