Popular quotes about Classical! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
So writing a song is much harder than doing a classical piece for me, because in a classical piece, I can just let the mood dictate what's going to happen.
Glenn DanzigWhen I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands.
MobyIts a small community, the classical music community, along with the excitement of new places and new things and this feeling of being at home wherever you go because thats where your community is.
Joshua RomanAccording to classical utilitarianism, the only intrinsic good is happiness; the only intrinsic bad is pain. That implies no intrinsic value in preserving nature, that preserving an endangered plant is valuable only if it benefits humans or other animals. Intuitively, that seems wrong but perhaps I shouldn't trust my intuition here.
Peter SingerThe 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.
Jimmy PageI think that's one of the things that has always put me in kind of an odd niche. It's that all of my understanding of orchestral music is via film, not via classical music like it's supposed to be. To me it's the same, it doesn't make any difference.
Danny ElfmanI'm not really involved with politics... I'm living in my cocoon with my classical music around.
Eva GreenAs 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 CollaI did all the musicals in high school, and I loved it. And then I got to theater school at college, and was like, "No, I'm a serious actor. I want to do Shakespeare. I want to do classical theater." I took myself very seriously.
Timothy OmundsonI understand that in people's eyes, classical music is kind of a lost and dying art, but in my eyes, it's like, "Oh, the musical language, which has been, in the past, only available to a scarce few at the top of the tower, is now wide open." Now people's ears are becoming more amenable to fake strings - I think this is great!
Owen PallettUnfortunately, the optimistic view that "classical civilization" handed down certain fundamental works that managed to include the knowledge contained in the lost writings has proved groundless. In fact, in the face of a general regression in the level of civilization, it's never the best works that will be saved through an automatic process of natural selection.
Lucio RussoIt 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 and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.
Cyril ConnollyYou 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 Higdon[Phil Wood] knew about wine. He knew about food. He knew about art. He knew about classical music. He was interested in things.
Jon GordonAll architecture, classical or not, must have some sense of order, and order is much harder to achieve without the straight lines and right angles that have dominated the building art from time immemorial.
Martin FillerContrary to popular opinion, classical music does not have to be enjoyed amid exclusive circles, there need not be any snobbishness attached to it. It's there for everyone. I play for the people.
Andre RieuThe 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 think Bond the character is distinct: He's British, he has a certain code that he lives by, he's incorruptible... he's a classical hero, but he's also fallible. He has inner demons, inner conflicts, and he's a romantic.
Barbara BroccoliArtists, 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 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!
Betty DodsonI am not doing something that it is experimental music in relation to classical music.
Joanna NewsomI've making videos since I was seventeen I was originally discollecting vintage hmmm... footages from different archives and setting moving pictures to classical music clips that meant a lot to me. Maybe there were places I have been where nice things have happened. I had a vision of making my life a work of art and I was looking for people who also felt that way.
Lana Del ReyThere was a stage when Balanchine and I didn't talk. I was trying to develop my classical technique as opposed to the fast-track technique that he was pushing. We were very quiet with each other. But after two years he saw what I was doing and sent messages through other people that, yes, this is good.
Gelsey KirklandThe 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 AmidonA system such as classical mechanics may be 'scientific' to any degree you like; but those who uphold it dogmatically - believing, perhaps, that it is their business to defend such a successful system against criticism as long as it is not conclusively disproved - are adopting the very reverse of that critical attitude which in my view is the proper one for the scientist.
Karl PopperI always wanted to be a journeyman actor. I wanted to be able to do comedy and drama, classical and contemporary. I like to do film and theater. And I pride myself on that diversity of being a journeyman actor.
Wendell PierceThe Italian historian Armando Petrucci has done more than anyone else to revive interest in public writing. His groundbreaking Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture surveys the forms and uses of epigraphic writing from classical antiquity to the twentieth century.
Geoffrey NunbergI used to like to set different film clips to classical music, not even my own songs, but make little movies.
Lana Del ReyI 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.
Penelope CruzI'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. JohnFrom his style, youโd think Jason Brannon was the dark double of Ray Bradbury. He cares more about character and realism than most writers Iโve read and his plots flow like well-orchestrated music. Indeed, Brannonโs writing has a classical feel, reminiscent of the best traditional work in the genre, even when heโs going for gut-wrenching terror and torture in-extremis.
Michael ArnzenWhat 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 ScottOur audience, it has been a more difficult process for classical music audiences around the world, and I'm not completely certain why.
Esa-Pekka SalonenIt certainly is an embarrassing fact, then, for certain classical scholars to have to face, that the Platonic Academy continued to function in Athens for over nine hundred years.
Robert K. G. TempleI grew up in a theater family. My father was a regional theater classical repertory producer. He created Shakespeare festivals. He produced all of Shakespeare's plays, mostly in Shakespeare festivals in Ohio. One of them, the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, is still going. So I grew up not wanting to be an actor, not wanting to go into the family business.
John LithgowI fell in love with the classical crossover genre when I was on AGT. I found out that I could use the microphone to establish a deeper intimacy with the audience. I did not portray an opera character; I was my true self. I would sing a four-to-five minute piece for the audience and then I could talk to them and say "Hi" to them! I would not need to act out scenes where my character was dying from tuberculosis or killing somebody else on stage, I could have a nice conversation with them.
Barbara PadillaI just really gravitate towards a nostalgia for a time when things were simpler. When beauty was more classical and glamorous.
Emmy RossumA hard-fought, well-fought, hairline-close game is as classical in sports as tragedy is in the theater. Victory is contained within defeat, and defeat is contained within victory. That's the way it is in the best of games. What counts in sports is not the victory, but the magnificence of the struggle.
Joe Paterno