Symphony Orchestras Quotes

• No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.

  Halford Luccock

  Life, Teamwork, Science

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• I'm too busy playing. When I'm playing I don't pay attention to who's listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don't listen to one instrument; you listen to music.

  Charles Mingus

  Symphony, Listening, Attention

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• I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Leadership, Running, Thinking

  Warren G. Bennis (1997). “Managing People is Like Herding Cats”, Executive Excellence Pub

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• A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.

  Max Lucado

  Motivational, Strength, Leadership

  Max Lucado (2010). “Chronicles of the Cross Collection”, p.205, Harper Collins

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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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• Composers love to write for symphony orchestras because the symphony is the Rolls Royce of musical instruments.

  David Del Tredici

  Writing, Symphony, Musical

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• And over the last ten years, after my work with the Brodsky Quartet, I had the opportunity to write arrangements for chamber group, chamber orchestra, jazz orchestra, symphony orchestra even.

  Elvis Costello

  Writing, Opportunity, Years

  Interview with Brian Wise, www.elviscostello.info. April 10, 2004.

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• No symphony orchestra ever played music like a two-year-old girl laughing with a puppy.

  Bernard Williams

  Family, Girl, Dog

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• When you hear a large symphony orchestra. for instance, in a concert hall, there's a big, sweeping sound that just doesn't get on to a record.

  Teddy Wilson

  Symphony, Orchestra, Sound

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• If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?

  Robert Fripp

  Sleep, Play, Symphony

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• And at the same time, I had my very first concert at the age of 16. I hadn't heard a symphony orchestra before, and I was so deeply impressed I said I have to be a conductor.

  Kurt Masur

  Symphony, Age, Orchestra

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• God comes to us in theater in the way we communicate with each other, whether it be a symphony orchestra, or a wonderful ballet, or a beautiful painting, or a play. It's a way of expressing our humanity.

  Julie Harris

  Beautiful, Play, Symphony

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• You can't play a symphony alone, it takes an orchestra to play it.

  Navjot Singh Sidhu

  Play, Symphony, Orchestra

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• The very day I purchased it, I christened my guitar as my monophonic symphony, six string orchestra.

  Harry Chapin

  Guitar, Symphony, Orchestra

  Song: Six String Orchestra, 1974

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• My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Symphony, Soul, Sound

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• When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Art, Angel, Symphony

  Madeleine L'Engle (2017). “A Severed Wasp: A Novel”, p.112, Open Road Media

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• Have you seen a symphony orchestra? There is a person at the back carrying a triangle. Now and again the conductor will point to him or her and that person will play "ting." That might seem so insignificant, but in the conception of the composer something irreplaceable would be lost to the total beauty of the symphony if that "ting" did not happen.

  Desmond Tutu

  Play, Symphony, Community

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• The symphony orchestra had played poorly, so the conductor was in a bad mood. That night he beat his wife--because the music hadn't been beautiful enough.

  George Carlin

  Beautiful, Night, Symphony

  George Carlin (1998). “Brain Droppings”, Hyperion

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• Few tears will be shed over the demise of the East German army, but what about East Germany’s eighty symphony orchestras, bound to lose some subsidies? Or the whole East German system, which covered everyone in a security blanket from day care to health care, from housing to education? Some people are beginning to express, if ever so slightly, nostalgia for that Berlin Wall.

  Bob Simon

  Wall, Army, Day Care

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• Consciousness is somehow a by-product of the simultaneous, high frequency firing of neurons in different parts of the brain. It's the meshing of these frequencies that generates consciousness, just as tones from individual instruments produce the rich, complex, & seamless sounds of a symphony orchestra

  Francis Crick

  Inspiration, Symphony, Brain

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• Way back in the old days, say in Europe of the Middle Ages, you had an aristocracy, and they could afford to pay for musicians. The kings and queens had musicians in the castles, and that developed into symphony orchestras and what we call "Classical music" now.

  Pete Seeger

  Kings, Queens, Europe

  Source: www.folkmusicworldwide.com

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• Every time I open the paper, there's some symphony orchestra collapsing somewhere in the United States. What the hell is going on? And then you find out that the board members try to run these things as businesses.

  Brice Marden

  Running, Symphony, Trying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Movies are a medium of expression like a symphony orchestra...or a painter's brush and canvas.

  Walt Disney

  Expression, Symphony, Orchestra

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• Audiences, whether they're seeing a film or a reading or whatever it is, a concert, they decide very quickly what kind of show it is, and then they judge it. They judge the rest of the thing by whether it conforms to their rules for what a good symphony orchestra would be.

  Laurie Anderson

  Reading, Symphony, Judging

  The Believer Interview, www.believermag.com. January, 2012.

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• [As a kid] I felt it was really weird that music schools behaved like a conveyor belt to make performers for those symphony orchestras. If you were really good and practiced your violin for a few hours a day for ten years you might be invited to this VIP elite club. For me music was not about that. It is about freedom and expression and individuality and impulsiveness and spontaneity. It wasn't so Apollonian; it was more Dionysian.

  Bjork

  School, Kids, Expression

  Interview with Brandon Stosuy, www.stereogum.com. June 29, 2011.

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