Alan Hovhaness Quotes

• The composer...joins Heaven and Earth with threads of sounds.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Heaven, Sound, Earth

  50 Copy quote

• I've always regarded nature as the clothing of God.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Nature, Travel, Religion

  25 Copy quote

• To me, atonality is against nature. There is a center to everything that exists. The planets have the sun, the earth, the moon.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Moon, Earth, Sun

  6 Copy quote

• I found a greater identity with my own emotions in the Armenian culture as I grew older, as well as from the beginning, although I didn't know anything about it.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Identity, Culture, Emotion

  8 Copy quote

• I did all kinds of things in order to earn a living.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Order, Kind, All Kinds

  4 Copy quote

• My purpose is to create music not for snobs, but for all people, music which is beautiful and healing. To attempt what old Chinese painters called 'spirit resonance' in melody and sound.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Beautiful, Healing, People

  "Alan Hovhaness Biographical Summary" by Marco Shirodkar, www.hovhaness.com.

  8 Copy quote

• I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Teacher, Piano, Orchestra

  4 Copy quote

• The greater the emotional intensity, the greater the simplicity.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Emotional, Simplicity, Intensity

  Program notes to "Avak The Healer", 1946.

  4 Copy quote

• I was born in Somerville, but I don't remember very much about it because we moved from there to Arlington when I was five years old, and it was in Arlington that I spent most of my childhood.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Years, Childhood, Arlington

  8 Copy quote

• There is nothing like practice.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Practice

  4 Copy quote

• I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Thinking, Symphony

  4 Copy quote

• This is not to say that the Scots are not fine people, but they were all sort of... well, my grandfather was a minister and sort of Protestant, and this was rather depressing to me.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Depressing, People, Grandfather

  8 Copy quote

• It's hard for me to think of others because I'm not particularly in sympathy with the music of this century.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Sympathy, Thinking, Century

  7 Copy quote

• My mother's background was Scottish. She came from an old family, some of whom lived in upper New York State and some of whom had come over from Scotland.

  Alan Hovhaness

  Mother, New York, Scotland

  7 Copy quote

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