Quotes About Classical

... 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.

Being 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.

But 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.

Go 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.

Classical music is one of the best things that ever happened to mankind. If you get introduced to it in the right way, it becomes your friend for life.

I listen to Neil Young and jazz and classical stations and, if my girlfriend's driving, it tends to be Hall & Oates.

With rock music, the amount of power that you can generate, the intensity behind the intentions of your lyrics that you can really reflect through rock music - you can't do that in jazz. You can't do that with classical.

When 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.

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 was able to turn to classical music many people, and this is one of the nicest achievements I can have.

Do you know what I've learned? That although ecstasy is the ability to stand outside yourself, dance is a way of rising up into space, of discovering new dimensions while still remaining in touch with your body. When you dance, the spiritual world and the real world manage to coexist quite happily. I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies.

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.

It 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.

When I came to the States, I still wanted to be an electric guitar player. But moved to Santa Fe in '86. And just decided that nylon string guitar is really what I wanted to do... And that really change my life totally as well... And Santa Fe is one of those really unusual places that is such an interesting mix of culture. There is a lot of from restaurants to music... I remember one of the first groups I saw playing there in the back of a restaurant, was a banjo player, a classical violinist, and a flamenco guitarist. And I thought to myself, "What? You know, this is great."

I remember being in college and taking a class on classical music and getting a big laugh when I said very sincerely that I was not really into trained voices. Some of the greatest singers can transcend their technical perfection and still sound great.

The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.

I 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.

It 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.

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.

Another classical music teacher from Performing Arts that I've stayed in contact with is Jonathan Strasser.

The classical music world is so snobbish.

I had a great year with Bob Mintzer [at Laguardia School of Arts]. Bob is great. We could have just brought the clarinet or dealt with classical stuff, or brought the flute or just dealt with comp and arranging... what a great teacher.

I 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.

The perfect aphorism would achieve classical balance and then immediately upset it.

This duality has been reflected in classical as well as modern literature as reason versus passion, or mind versus intuition. The split between the conscious mind and the unconscious. There are moments in each of our lives when our verbal-intellect suggests one course, and our hearts, or intuition, another.

I did extensive, extensive recordings and made a classical CD-ROM set, which is still on the market. For ten years, it was by itself as the cream of the crop of samples.

Laurence Olivier said if you have ambition to be a serious classical actor, you must be as fit as an athlete. For me, the breakthrough was going to live in California. I exercised. I drank less. It was one of the things about California that had a positive impact on me.

The 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.

The day is past when schools could afford to give sufficient time and attention to the teaching of the ancient languages to enable the student to get that enjoyment out of classical literature that made the lives of our grandfathers so rich.

I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.

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.

I always listen to all kinds of different music from different years. I listen to the contemporary, but once in a while into eighties, you know just for fun, and sometimes classical too. So I have this big mix on my i-pod... Amy Winehouse, Gwen Stefani, OutKast, Jay-Z. I listen to trance, pop, everything. It really depends on my mood.

I 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.

War loses a great deal of its romance after a soldier has seen his first battle. I have a more vivid recollection of the first that the last one I was in. It is a classical maxim that it is sweet and becoming to die for one's country; but whoever has seen the horrors of a battlefield feels that it is far sweeter to live for it.

I started getting interested in the notes that I could hear being generated when I hammered on while playing a classical guitar.

I’ve learned what ‘classical’ means. It means something that sings and dances through sheer joy of existence.

I've done classical theaters. I played Hamlet myself and Romeo.

From his style, you’d think Jason Brannon was the dark double of Ray Bradbury. He cares more about character and realism than most writers I’ve read and his plots flow like well-orchestrated music. Indeed, Brannon’s writing has a classical feel, reminiscent of the best traditional work in the genre, even when he’s going for gut-wrenching terror and torture in-extremis.

In those days a boy on the classical side officially did almost nothing but classics. I think this was wise; the greatest service we can to education today is to teach few subjects. No one has time to do more than a very few things well before he is twenty, and when we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards, perhaps for life.

My core competency has really informed my painting. The roots of editing stem from classical paintings - classic painters intended to drive your eye from this conflict to that intrigue, ending with a caprice. That is a montage, that is editing. It became a flipbook in later generations.

Jazz isn't as profitable for labels like Hip hop or Rap. Jazz needs subsidies to continue, just like European classical works of Bach and Beethoven are subsidized.

Every teacher will tell you that you cannot dance classical technique with perfection, there is no such thing, there is no way. So you have to adapt the technique to your abilities or to your deficiencies. Learn to cheat!

If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.

I 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.

Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky were not classical musicians while they were alive and active, they were the rock stars of their day.

A well-rounded performer will listen to all kinds of music. I like classical, Middle Eastern, and rock a lot.

All directors make films in individual ways. But the classical kind of view of filmmaking is that you have a script and it's very linear.

I 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.