Conductor Quotes

• I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.

  Harriet Tubman

  Women, Eight, Years

  Quoted in Lyde Cullen Sizer, Divided Houses (1992)

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• The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.

  Benjamin Zander

  Inspirational, Music, Motivation

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• The great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.

  Blaine Lee Pardoe

  Leadership, Stars, Business

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• It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Light, People, Genius

  Arthur Conan Doyle (1993). “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”, p.17, Wordsworth Editions

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• [As a conductor] there has to be, between me and the orchestra, an unshakable bond of trust, born out of mutual respect, through which we can spin a musical narrative that we all believe in.

  Charles Hazlewood

  Motivation, Believe, Inspiration

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  Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Music, Communication, Talking

  Leonard Bernstein (1976). “The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard”, p.140, Harvard University Press

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• A conductor has to know how to translate music into a communicative force that makes the listener want to hear what he has to say.

  Isaac Stern

  Communication, Want, Force

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• Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director.

  Michael Tilson Thomas

  Editors, Directors, Hybridity

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• Perhaps the chief requirement of [the conductor] is that he be humble before the composer; that he never interpose himself between the music and the audience; that all his efforts, however strenuous or glamorous, be made in the service of the composer's meaning - the music itself, which, after all, is the whole reason for the conductor's existence.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Humble, Effort, Requirements

  "The Cambridge Companion to Conducting". Book by José Antonio Bowen (p. 16), November 20, 2003.

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• We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him -- if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us.

  Peter Brook

  Music, Invisible, Possession

  Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

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• A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

  Leopold Stokowski

  Inspirational, Music, Art

  Leopold Stokowski's address to an audience at Carnegie Hall, as quoted in The New York Times, May 11, 1967.

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• Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

  George Szell

  Music, Giving, Jazz And Life

  Newsweek 28 Jan. 1963

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• Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Communication, Two, Technique

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• A conductor should guide rather than command.

  Riccardo Muti

  Guides, Should, Command

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• Music is a labyrinth with no beginning and no end,
  full of new paths to discover,
  where mystery remains eternal

  Pierre Boulez

  Music, Discovery, Labyrinth

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• Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.

  Richard Wagner

  Music, Looks, Opera Singing

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• A good conductor ought to be a good chauffeur; the qualities that make the one also make the other. They are concentration, an incessant control of attention, and presence of mind; the conductor only has to add a little sense of music.

  Sergei Rachmaninoff

  Presence Of Mind, Quality, Add

  "Rachmaninoff's Recollections". Book by Oskar von Riesemann, p. 155, 1934.

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• The principal task of a conductor is not to put himself in evidence but to disappear behind his functions as much as possible. We are pilots, not servants.

  Franz Liszt

  Tasks, Pilots, Disappear

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• There's power in the collective. If you don't believe me, just watch a symphony orchestra with a conductor and 120 people who are thinking about exactly the same thing at the same moment - no babies, no stock markets, no mortgages. Just 32nd notes.

  Quincy Jones

  Baby, Believe, Thinking

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• The conductor has the advantage of not seeing the audience.

  Andre Kostelanetz

  Advantage, Audience, Seeing

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• If you want to please the critics, don't play too loud, too soft, too fast, too slow.

  Arturo Toscanini

  Music, Play, Want

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• A great conductor possesses that certain charisma and talent that demand the ears and the attention of an audience. I can't tell you how that happens, but I'm sure it has an inner basis that is never learned.

  Isaac Stern

  Attention, Ears, Demand

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• The most important thing for the conductor is that he or she listens. Her listening will make things sound a certain way. If the conductor listens well, the musicians listen each other better. The conductor can in effect impose a certain kind of listening for everybody.

  Laurence Equilbey

  Listening, Important, Musician

  "There Will Be Joy". Interview with Lydia Perović, logger.believermag.com. August 1, 2013.

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• The most important thing to do is really listen.

  Itzhak Perlman

  Important, Things To Do, Important Things

  FaceBook post by Itzhak Perlman from Dec 21, 2012

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• I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.

  Franz Liszt

  Littles, Berlioz, Function

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