Popular quotes about Classical! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 24
In fact although I have studied in a Conservatory the classical piano, I do not consider myself a classical pianist.
Richard ClaydermanI wouldn't know anything about opera music if it wasn't for Bugs Bunny. That was my entire introduction to opera music. I wouldn't know anything about classical music if it wasn't for "Fantasia." They didn't have to do that stuff. They chose to base this ridiculous, funny, intriguing, creative story on this beautiful classical music. It's the combination of the high and the low that I thought was very cool. But I had no concept of it as a kid.
Jon HammMy Mom is a ballet director, so I had this idea in me that classical training is the best foundation for anything you do, so I wanted to get a classical background and voice.
Shuler HensleyI had a lot of classical influences. I had classical music and opera and literature, but I also liked sleaze. And putting it together, sleaze and glamour, it just made sense to me.
Rick OwensThere 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 Liebert'Godfather' was very classical, the way it was shot, the style, the whole driving force of it was more classical, almost Shakespearean.
Francis Ford CoppolaBut those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean.
Michael Tilson ThomasWhen I listen to music today, it is about 99 percent classical. I rarely even listen to folk music, the music of my own specialty, because folk music is to me more limited than classical music.
Tom GlazerI think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time.
Brian EnoWhat the world wants, what the world is waiting for, is not Modern Poetry or Classical Poetry or Neo-Classical Poetry - but Good Poetry. And the dreadful disreputable doubt, which stirs in my own skeptical mind, is doubt about whether it would really matter much what style a poet chose to write in, in any period, as long as he wrote Good poetry.
Gilbert K. ChestertonThe first notes I still play when I start a sound check are classical. Those are my roots.
Andrew BirdWhen I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer.
Dave BrubeckToday 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 SontagWe the undersigned, intend to establish an instruction and training institution which differs from the common elementary schools principally in that it will embrace, outside of (in addition to) the general and elementary curriculum, all branches of the classical high school, which are necessary for a true Christian and scientific education, such as: Religion, the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, French and English languages; History, Geography, Mathematics, Physics, natural history, Introduction to Philosophy, Music, and Drawing.
C. F. W. WaltherSo from Jazz, Blues, R&B, Soul, Classical and Country music, Hip Hop has introduced us to a little bit of everything.
B.J. The Chicago KidI wanted to make a classical piece that was actually designed to be a CD, not designed for performance.
Anne DudleyThe illustrator is essentially a reporter: his subjects come from the outside, lit by a flash. A subject comes to the classical artist from inside, and when he discovers confirmation of it in the outside world he feels that it has been there all the time.
Kenneth ClarkMy landscapes are not only beautiful, or nostalgic, with a Romantic or classical suggestion of lost Paradises, but above all 'untruthful.' By 'untruthful,' I mean the glorifying way we look at Nature. Nature, which in all its forms is always against us, because it knows no meaning, no pity, no sympathy, because it knows nothing and is absolutely mindless, the total antithesis of ourselves.
Gerhard RichterIt was a grey day, that least fleshly of all weathers; a day of dreams and far hopes and clear visions. It was a day easily associated with those abstract truths and purities that dissolve in the sunshine or fade out in mocking laughter by the light of the moon. The trees and clouds were carved in classical severity; the sounds of the countryside had harmonized to a monotone, metallic as a trumpet, breathless as the Grecian urn.
F. Scott FitzgeraldI grew up with classical music blasting in my parents' living room and my older brother's practicing saxophone in his room listening to jazz... a beautiful chaos.
Josephine de La BaumeIt is an ancient belief, going back to classical antiquity, that specialization of any kind is illiberal in a freeman. A man willing to bury himself in the details of some small endeavor has been considered lost to these larger considerations which must occupy the mind of the ruler.
Richard M. WeaverThere are fields of scientific work...which have been explored from the different sides of pure mathematics, statistics, electrical engineering, and neurophysiology...in which every single notion receives a separate and different name from each group, and in which important work has been triplicated or quadruplicated, while still other important work is delayed by the unavailability in one field of results that may have already become classical in the next field.
Norbert WienerThere are so many people who are interested in classical music. Fortunately, I think many of them are quite young, so it's wonderful to present new programs to them.
Rafal BlechaczI love hip-hop; I love Sleigh Bells. I also love classical music and musical theater.
Tatiana MaslanyThe spirit of tanka interests me more than following rigid conventions. As I understand it, the tradition allows a variety of approaches, from simple description and heartfelt expression to classical allusion and evocative wordplay. Succeeding generations rediscover and renew the form so that it retains its vitality.
Harryette MullenI 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 SeverinsenClassical music gradually lost popularity because it is too complicated: you need twenty-five or thirty skilled musicians just to hum it properly. So people began to develop regular music.
Dave BarryI don't think taste is about money. As your career develops, you're able to decide what to spend your money on. I live in a really small apartment in London, and that's a choice. I live at The Carlyle in New York, but it's not big. It's about making choices of style over flashiness. People's style is subjective and mine happens to be around the classical because I feel comfortable with that, and because of my background. I'm probably living in the wrong time. I should have lived in the Thirties or the Fifties.
Charles FinchIt 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.
Stevie NicksThe whole thing of singing on my own has been accidental and random. I sang a huge amount as a kid, and I was a boy soprano. I didn't do that much classical music; I did a little bit. I had a lovely voice. And then when my voice dropped, I didn't worry about it consciously because I wasn't that invested in my singing at the time.
Sam AmidonI was trained at classical piano as a youngster back in PA. To rebel, I bought a drum set and played in some rock & roll bands. In college I picked up a guitar and became obsessed with practicing which led to playing guitar in indie rock bands in the mid 90's. Which led me to Los Angeles.
Jeff CardoniA theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended is its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression which classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content concerning which I am convinced that within the framework of the applicability of its basic concepts, it will never be overthrown.
Albert EinsteinI'm pretty optimistic about the future of rock... it will be back to composition as in classical music or jazz.
Jimmy PageWhat is classical music if not the epitome of sensuality, passion, and understated erotica that popular music, even with all of its energy and life, cannot even begin to touch?
Lara St. JohnI definitely try to broaden the scope of music. I don't know if it's pop or classical or what, but I'm religiously challenging myself all the time, for better or for worse.
Rufus WainwrightBasically my influences have been American influences. It's been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music.
Horace SilverScience 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 FlewAny questions I had about whether a redneck from Oklahoma could become a Brown Classical Philosophy professor ended when I met Tim [Blake Nelson].
Edward NortonWhat we're doing now, is to try to eradicate the limited notion of how people are interacting with each other through hyper-racialized ideas. A lot of it deal with, as an example, genre. If I ask you to visualize a trap musician or a hip-hop musician, you'll see one thing. If I say visualize a western classical musician, you'll see a very different thing. A lot of how music is disseminated to us is hyper-racialized. It's not something that we think about all the time, but if you take a minute to look back, it's why you get this argument when there's a white rapper.
Christian ScottIf a musician wants to blossom into a full-fledged person, it's not enough if he knows only classical music; nor it is enough if he's well-versed only in raagas and techniques. Instead, he should be a knowledgeable person interested in life and philosophy. In his personal life there should be, atleast in some corner of his heart, a tinge of lingering sorrow.
A. R. RahmanThe 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. CarrollThe realm of classical music is so vast - not only in terms of style but of era, age and the purposes for which it was composed - it is an enormous art form.
David FinckelJazz isn't dead yet. It's the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it's a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it's coming out of the U.S., it's not going to survive unless it's got some jazz influence.
Dave BrubeckAt a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music.
Herbie HancockKaz's art is a powerful example of discipline and freedom. His classical calligraphy captures the inner movement and stillness of the brush and mind.
Joan HalifaxCulture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building -- like Tower Bridge -- or a classical front put on a steel frame -- like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living -- not something added, like sugar on a pill.
Eric Gill