Popular quotes about Classical! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 84
I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.
Nina SimoneIn fact although I have studied in a Conservatory the classical piano, I do not consider myself a classical pianist.
Richard ClaydermanIn a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form.
Mike FiggisClassical music and pop are two different universes, each with its own difficulties, peculiarities, depth and artistic dignity. In Italy, I think there is a fairly clear line of demarcation, but the history of music is full of fusion. Popular and classical music have always found points of contact, of crossing, exchange, both drawing mutual profit.
Andrea Bocelli... 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 McGuinnI love the theater and I particularly love the classical theater and I love doing Shakespeare. It pays the soul, but it doesn't pay the rent.
Stacy KeachJazz 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.
Sonny RollinsAccording 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 SingerThank God for movie music. It preserves the rich vocabulary in classical music through challenging times.
Michael Tilson ThomasToday 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 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 BohmMy 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.
Olivia Newton-JohnWe 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. WaltherThe 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.
Shimon PeresSo 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 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 PallettThe history of music is nothing more than the history of art-music or classical music, the music that was commissioned by aristocrats.
Frank FairfieldI write my music with the idea that it will appeal to all of those people, and I want them to go in with all the history that's within all of us - all the things that they've listened to in the backs of their minds, whether it's country music or minimal techno, or classical music or whatever. I want them to bring that excitement, that love, or that hate, or whatever it might be, to my music. I feel that my music draws on so many different things.
Missy MazzoliNo, 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.
James M. BarrieUnlike modern military codes, ancient texts are almost never purposely misleading, purposely scrambled. ... indeed, literacy was so uncommon until classical times that the very writing of a message sufficed to keep it from almost everybody.
E. J. W. BarberThe 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 studied shades, textures by painting after the Old Masters, the classical European paintings, as part of my educational process.
Kehinde WileyWhen 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 MirrenClassical 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 am not doing something that it is experimental music in relation to classical music.
Joanna NewsomSeriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time.
Bobby McFerrinAbove all, in comedy, and again and again since classical times, passages can be found in which the level of representation is interrupted by references to the spectators or to the fictive nature of the play.
Paul WatzlawickThere 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 KirklandI know there are a lot of eyes on me now from young girls, and it makes me so proud. The only Black woman examples aren't Rihanna and Beyoncรฉ. It makes me proud that I am a classical ballerina and they can look at me and see another way to succeed. That is setting a new standard.
Misty CopelandThe 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.
James LoebWhen I was younger, studying classical music, I really had to put in the time. Three hours a day is not even nice - you have to put in six.
Alicia KeysI 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 MaeToday, 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.
Richard ClaydermanIndian 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.
Nita AmbaniIt started so early, it all runs together. But what made a huge impact on me was when I went to Europe at 15 or 16 years old. All I knew before that was music on the radio and TV. When I went over there I realized there are all different levels of music. There are people who do blues, jazz, classical, working in film, TV and all kinds of places. You might not see them on MTV but there are lots of needs and uses and opportunities for all kinds of music.
Chris Thomas KingThere's a richness to the old works if you look before the 1950s. The chord progressions and the language was more complicated, especially in the jazz and classical world.
Tori AmosI 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 WainwrightI haven't come across any recent new ideas in film that strike me as being particularly important and that have to do with form. I think that a preoccupation with originality of form is more or less a fruitless thing. A truly original person with a truly original mind will not be able to function in the old form and will simply do something different. Others had much better think of the form as being some sort of classical tradition and try to work within it.
Stanley KubrickAny questions I had about whether a redneck from Oklahoma could become a Brown Classical Philosophy professor ended when I met Tim [Blake Nelson].
Edward NortonSeveral classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheIf 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. RahmanClassical pianist Awadagin Pratt. I first heard this eccentric and introverted performer when I was living in the Midwest. He was playing Brahms ballades - haunting.
Daniel BreakerThe result of this anti-classical revolution you had just before World War I was that today, almost all the economic growth in the last decade has gone to the One Percent. It's gone to Wall Street, to real estate.
Michael Hudson