Orchestra Quotes - Page 6

• Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Book, Musical, Different

  FaceBook post by Orhan Pamuk from Feb 12, 2012

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• An orchestra full of stars can be a disaster.

  Kurt Masur

  Stars, Disaster

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• One of the things that benefited me that anyone can learn is classical technique. That shows the orchestra that exists within the instrument.

  Steve Young

  Technique, Instruments, Shows

  Interview with Gordon Ames, www.outlawmagazine.com. May 2, 2012.

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• Essentially, the [New York] Philharmonic is just like any other orchestra-they all have the spirit of kids, and if you scratch away a little of the fatigue and cynicism, out comes a 17-year-old music student again, full of wonder, exuberance and a tremendous love of music.

  Zubin Mehta

  New York, Kids, Years

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• For me the whole world is like a gigantic theater in which I am the only spectator without opera glasses. The orchestra plays the prelude to the third act, the stage is far away as in a dream, my heart swells with delight—and you want to blind me with a pair of half-ruble spectacles?

  Isaac Babel

  Dream, Heart, Play

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• The sound universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there's a cricket orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of night the dogs howl about how misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Dog, Night, Misunderstood

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• If the souls of lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few to which nought but the refined and exquisite sadness of a violin could do justice. Many might be likened unto common pianos, jangling and out of tune, and some to the feeble piping of a penny whistle, and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin-pot.

  Miles Franklin

  Couple, Sadness, Piano

  Miles Franklin (2009). “My Brilliant Career”, p.456, The Floating Press

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• The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.

  Nicholas Meyer

  Travel, Adventure, Symphony

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• There are men charged with the duty of examining the construction of the plants, animals, and soils which are the instruments of the great orchestra. These men are called professors. Each selects one instrument and spends his life taking it apart and describing its strings and sounding boards. This process of dismemberment is called research. The place for dismemberment is called a university.

  Aldo Leopold

  Animal, Men, Boards

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.188, Library of America

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• One of the things I love about negotiations is that you have to be able to play it like an orchestra, different instruments for different circumstances. There's sweetness, and encouragement, and cajoling. There's pressure, there's drama, there's ultimatums.

  Susan Rice

  Encouragement, Drama, Play

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• Our dead brothers and sisters still live for us and bid us think of life, not death-of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Death, Brother, Spring

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• I studied music for my first two years in college. When I went to UC Berkeley, I failed the admission requirements to get into the music school there, so I studied communications and public policy, which actually were a greater engine for my career than a musical education would have been. If I had gotten into the music department at Berkeley, I'd probably be a timpanist in an orchestra right now.

  Stewart Copeland

  Communication, School, College

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• People have their own interests and they want to play a certain kind of music. People want to play in orchestras. They want to play on Broadway. Those that want to play traditional jazz and have no interests in the ideas of improvisation. So in spit of the fact that there are fifty violin players, you might only narrow it down to ten and within those ten, there might only be three who have the right kind of background and credentials to deal with what you need to deal with. Everybody's got their own special thing that they are after and a lot of times you don't have time to be training people.

  Henry Threadgill

  Player, Ideas, People

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• I think that there's a lot more freedom in the low budget, the independent films where, unfortunately, you don't have the money, necessarily, to get the orchestras in there to play a lot of stuff. But, you have a lot more freedom, very often.

  Danny Elfman

  Independent, Thinking, Play

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• What is a career, actually? Nobody can destroy my career. Only I can destroy my career, if I am a bad conductor. I've gone to lesser known orchestras in Scotland and Sweden, Detroit, but I have enjoyed the places I've been, and had success. I like the close community relations, and to solve problems.

  Neeme Jarvi

  Careers, Scotland, Community

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• I am still very proud of that concert. In America, the (musicians') connection with the conductor is as with management - it becomes political. You cannot conduct properly in this environment. I hate this enemy situation between management and orchestra members.

  Neeme Jarvi

  Hate, America, Political

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• To this day I am indulgent toward orchestras that are trying to lift themselves in the world, while critics are busy assuring them that they are not the Vienna Philharmonic and never will be.

  Robertson Davies

  Trying, Vienna, World

  Robertson Davies (1996). “The Cunning Man”, Penguin Group USA

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• There's not an orchestra in the world that doesn't have weaknesses. None of us can play everything well. The repertoire is just too big.

  Leonard Slatkin

  Play, Weakness, World

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• The Gods have meant
  That I should dance
  And in some mystic hour
  I shall move to unheard rhythms
  Of the cosmic orchestra of heaven
  And you will know the language
  Of my wordless poems
  And will come to me
  For that is why I dance.

  Ruth St. Denis

  Dance, Moving, Heaven

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• The brain is more than an assemblage of autonomous modules, each crucial for a specific mental function. Every one of these functionally specialized areas must interact with dozens or hundreds of others, their total integration creating something like a vastly complicated orchestra with thousands of instruments, an orchestra that conducts itself, with an ever-changing score and repertoire.

  Oliver Sacks

  Creating, Brain, Dozen

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• A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument--a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself--in soli tude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Men, Artist, Symphony

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Counsels and Maxims”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

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• it's important as a composer to sit in silence and imagine these complex musical worlds in your head, but it's also a wonderful experience to touch your music and to hear it and hear it in the room with you and to say, you can't have an entire orchestra there, but you'd kind of like to have the orchestra there.

  Tod Machover

  Silence, Musical, Important

  Source: bigthink.com

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• But a large symphony orchestra basically is a repertory company and it has a very enormous repertoire and it is important for the performers to be able to know how to shift focus so that they instantly become part of the sound world that a particular repertoire demands.

  Michael Tilson Thomas

  Symphony, Focus, Important

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• The other saxophones, except as solo instruments, really don't have much point in the orchestra

  Gerry Mulligan

  Saxophone, Solo, Mulligans

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• You have to change your mind with every orchestra because every orchestra has a different character.

  Kurt Masur

  Character, Mind, Different

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