Baritones Quotes

• We praise Him, we bless Him, we adore Him, we glorify Him, and we wonder who is that baritone across the aisle and that pretty woman on our right who smells of apple blossoms. Our bowels stir and our cod itches and we amend our prayers for the spiritual life with the hope that it will not be too spiritual.

  John Cheever

  Spiritual, Prayer, Smell

  "The Journals of John Cheever" by Robert Gottlieb, 1956.

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• Opera is when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Making Love, Opera, Want

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• Of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one. . . . Vitality never "takes." You have it or you haven't it, like health or brown eyes or a baritone voice.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Eye, Voice, Vitality

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.3094, e-artnow

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• I don't have that kind of voice, the big baritone or rousing tenor sound. My wheelhouse was in the frothier pieces. So my appreciation for those older musicals and revivals grew.

  Jesse Tyler Ferguson

  Appreciation, Voice, Sound

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• No baritone player should be afraid of the noise it makes. Harry Carney isn't!

  Pepper Adams

  Player, Noise, Should

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• When I discovered Gil Scott-Heron, I discovered a musical hero, a man who spoke baritone truth to power over jazzy funk at a time when funky music was primarily about shake, shake, shaking your booty.

  Will Hermes

  Hero, Men, Musical

  "A Surprising Record From Gil Scott Heron". "All Things Considered" with Melissa Block and Michele Norris, www.npr.org. February 11, 2010.

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• All music is is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments.

  Walt Whitman

  Music, Instruments, Music Is

  Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.90, NYU Press

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• So I played alto for quite a while until I saved up the money for the baritone

  Gerry Mulligan

  Mulligans, Saved

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• When I was a young man, I was a baritone, very far from possessing the whole range of the tenor then.

  Placido Domingo

  Men, Range, Young

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• But if you had asked him what his work was, he would look candidly and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his gold pincenez, and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone: "My work is literature."

  Anton Chekhov

  Work, Eye, Gold

  Anton Chekhov (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated)”, p.1438, Delphi Classics

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• The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity.

  Steve Lacy

  Song, Voice, Elements

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• The baritone can serve functions that the alto and tenor cannot, in orchestral voicing

  Gerry Mulligan

  Mulligans, Function, Tenors

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• In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

  Gerry Mulligan

  Player, Way, Mulligans

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• I am not in the habit of taking baritones to supper.

  Eric Taylor

  Singers, Habit, Supper

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• I play the baritone horn - which is like a mini tuba, and is the least sexy instrument you can choose and I generally say I don’t play one so I don’t have to acknowledge it. I also play fife.

  Steve Carell

  Sexy, Play, Tubas

  "Q&A: ‘Schmucks’ Steve Carell and Paul Rudd". RELEVANT Magazine Interview, relevantmagazine.com. July 30, 2010.

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• You know, that was the first time [with Any Winehouse] that I probably ever used a baritone sax. And it's certainly the texture that, you know - it's all over the record 'cause it's a nice compliment to her tone.

  Mark Ronson

  Nice, Texture, Records

  Source: www.npr.org

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• I never felt like that in my life. I didn't know human beings played these instruments. I heard them in Chicago and Louisville and St. Louis all my life, you know? But I didn't know human beings played them, you know? So the next day I went to Coontz Junior High School and I started on sousaphone, tuba, B-flat baritone, E-flat alto, French horn, trombone.

  Quincy Jones

  School, Next Day, Juniors

  "Quincy Jones Recalls "Freaking Out" at Michael Jackson's Death and His Private Nickname for the Star". Interview with Stephen Galloway, www.hollywoodreporter.com. April 11, 2015.

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• When I was a kid, I always saw these pictures of a man called Bob Gordon with a baritone saxophone, who I understood was my father. Turns out he wasn't. He was my mother's first husband.

  Jon Gordon

  Mother, Husband, Father

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• For years The National has been labeled as a gloomy kind of rock bandI think mostly because of Matt’s deep baritone voice, which even if he is singing about unicorns and butterflies, he just sounds sad most of the time.

  Bryce Dessner

  Butterfly, Thinking, Rocks

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• When I was 19 I went to art school. I had six months of teaching myself to play baritone ukulele under my belt so I was sort of a novice folkie... I was singing folk songs at that time.

  Joni Mitchell

  Song, Art, Teaching

  Interview with Joe Smith, jonimitchell.com. November 3, 1986.

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• The first instrument I had was made in the late '70s. Back then they had basically one tuning. I shifted slightly away from that tuning right away (to what is now called the Baritone Melody Tuning), because I wanted more string overlap between the two sides.The instrument I currently play has an active pickup system, Fret Rails, a fully adjustible bridge, adjustible truss, Flaps adjustible nut. Even with all of these advances, I'm always struck when I play the older instrument how good they were even then. Emmett's always been great at implementing his ideas.

  Greg Howard

  Bridges, Play, Two Sides

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• Well, you know, the first step I took was to drop the alto and baritone and concentrate on tenor exclusively, a decision I've never really looked back on with any regret. Another thing was that I was 17 when I moved up there, and my listening had really focused on freer music in the previous couple of years- Coltrane was playing with his expanded group, and everyone was listening closely to that, and we were into Shepp and Ayler as well.

  David S. Ware

  Couple, Regret, Years

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• There're lots of musicians in my family, too. My mother sings incredibly well. I've got to make a record with my mother's voice on it. She sings a lyric soprano. We do the opposite. I'm a baritone. She's a star singer in her church. She always does her solo.

  Grace Jones

  Mother, Stars, Opposites

  "Interview with Andy Warhol, André Leon Talley". Interview with Andy Warhol, André Leon Talley, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 16, 2014.

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• Please God, we're all right here. Please leave us alone.
  Don't send death in his fat red suit and his ho-ho baritone.

  Anne Sexton

  God, Contentment, Red

  Anne Sexton (1978). “Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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• Consider the number of young people all over the world who are getting married, day in and day out, for no other reason than thatsomeone of the opposite sex looks well in a green jersey or sings baritone, and then tell me that divorce has reached menacing proportions. The surface of divorce has not even been scratched yet.

  Robert Benchley

  Marriage, Sex, Divorce

  Robert Benchley (2016). “My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew”, p.132, Pickle Partners Publishing

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