Quotes About Classical

Being a musician, you want to be able to do the hardest stuff there is. People would think it's classical, but in classical, it's all on the page and the difficulty is keeping up with the music.

It seemed to me that had Haydn lived to our day he would have retained his own style while accepting something of the new at the same time. That was the kind of symphony I wanted to write: a symphony in the classical style. And when I saw that my idea was beginning to work, I called it the Classical Symphony.

Too much horsing around with unrealistic stances and classic forms and rituals is just too artificial and mechanical, and doesn't really prepare the student for actual combat. A guy could get clobbered while getting into this classical mess. Classical methods like these, which I consider a form of paralysis, only solidify and constrain what was once fluid. Their practitioners are merely blindly rehearsing routines and stunts that will lead nowhere.

But classical music is not entertainment, and I feel viciously strong about that. Classical music is forever. Entertainment is something that is here today, and may be gone tomorrow.

I 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.

And 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.

The 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.

I studied classical percussion for ten years. At one point I was thinking about going to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, but then I realized it's actually not what I wanted to do.

Scientific realism in classical (i.e. pre-quantum) physics has remained compatible with the naive realism of everyday thinking on the whole; whereas it has proven impossible to find any consistent way to visualize the world underlying quantum theory in terms of our pictures in the everyday world. The general conclusion is that in quantum theory naive realism, although necessary at the level of observations, fails at the microscopic level.

Listening to classical music is a journey not a state; it's an activity not a meditation.

Al-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.

I've never approached classical music in a formal way, ever. I couldn't read very well. I'd have to play every piece and internalize it, almost as if I had written it myself.

Jazz is an endless source of ideas, because you can use anything. You can play operatic arias. You can incorporate them into jazz. You can play gypsy music and incorporate it into jazz. You can European classical and you can incorporate it into jazz. You can use anything and jazz it up, as they used to say.

The naive is what is or appears to be natural, individual, or classical to the point of irony or to the point of continuous alternation of self-creation and self-destruction. If it is only instinct, then it is childlike, childish, or silly; if it is only intention, it becomes affectation.

The guitar to me, from the classical/gut-string guitar right through to Hendrix, et cetera, has all the range [of sound]. Within those six strings it is incredible what one can get sound-wise. It's just down to imagination, really.

My 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.

Classical tragedy was the war between good and evil. We wanted evil to be defeated and good to be victorious. But the battle in modern tragedy is between good and good. And no matter which side wins, we'll still be heartbroken.

I would prefer to listen to a French classical composer like Olivier Messiaen than to the pop hits of the day.

The foes now are universal - poverty, famine, religious radicalization, desertification, drugs, proliferation of nuclear weapons, ecological devastation. They threaten all nations, just as science and information are the potential friends of all nations. Classical diplomacy and strategy were aimed at identifying enemies and confronting them. Now they have to identify dangers, global or local, and tackle them before they become disasters.

English 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.

Anybody can be a rapper, but not anybody can be a classical artist.

I have observed, too, that the people of the many countries that I have visited are showing an ever increasing interest in the classical and traditional music of their own cultures.

A 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.

Parents...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.

What 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.

There 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.

You 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.

The road has been viewed as a male turf. If you think of the classic "Odyssey," of, you know, classical literature or Jack Kerouac or almost any road story, it's really about a man on the road. There's an assumption that the road is too dangerous for women.

The classical example of a successful research programme is Newton's gravitational theory: possibly the most successful research programme ever.

For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.

A lot of blues guitarists play with only three fingers, and they can't figure out certain runs that require the use of their little fingers. Classical training is good for that.

No, no," Mr. Darling always said, "I am responsible for it all. I, George Darling, did it. MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA." He had had a classical education.

The creation story unfurling within the scientific enterprise provides the fundamental context, the fundamental arena of meaning, for all the peoples of the Earth. For the first time in human history, we can agree on the basic story of the galaxies, the stars, the planets, minerals, life forms, and human cultures. This story does not diminish the spiritual traditions of the classical or tribal periods of human history. Rather, the story provides the proper setting for the teachings of all traditions, showing the true magnitude of their central truths.

When I found out after that first successful exhibition that the gallery wanted me to do another show like the first one, I come out two years later with four 6-foot drawings of classical nudes masturbating. The gallery director flipped the freak out!

Perhaps 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.

Now that rock is turning 50, it's become classical in itself. It's interesting to see that development.

The peculiar characteristic of classical music is that it is really better than it sounds.

It 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.

Piano was - well, all musical instruments were taught in this very rigid, formal, classical method when I was young.

Obviously classical music tends to be stuff that is usually at least a hundred years old.

I used to dance for seventeen years -classical ballet, which was very disciplined. I like yoga and Pilates, but I don't have the discipline to go to the gym.

Today, Lan Lan is one of my favourite classical pianists.... Years ago I had a great admiration for Arthur Rubinstein but I have no doubt that Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin were also fantastic piano players - though there is no way to listen to them when they were performing.

Indian classical dance is sustained by a profound philosophy. Form seeks to merge with the formless, motions seek to become a part of the motionless, and the dancing individual seeks to become one with the eternal dance of the cosmos.

Marijuana is a useful catalyst for specific optical and aural aesthetic perceptions. I apprehended the structure of certain pieces of jazz and classical music in a new manner under the influence of marijuana, and these apprehensions have remained valid in years of normal consciousness.

Taxi drivers used to ask me what kind of music I did, and I'd say, 'Well, it's kind of jazz, soul, classical' - but that makes no sense to anyone.

What 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?

I like rock music. I also like classical, if you ask me. I'm very adaptable, they say that. But I have certain preference too, be honest.

I 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.