Symphony Quotes - Page 3

• It is the tuning of the universe... It's as if at the beginning of the symphony God turns up the volume just a tiny bit.

  Benjamin Zander

  Tuning, Tiny, Volume

  12 Copy quote

• We did experiments with the Boston Symphony for many years where we measured the angles of incidence of sound arriving at the ears of the audience, then took the measurements back to MIT and analyzed them.

  Amar Bose

  Boston, Years, Sound

  11 Copy quote

• To have everything written for you It's not really creating. That's why I think symphony drummers are so limited. They 're limited to exactly what was played a hundred years before them by a thousand other drummers.

  Buddy Rich

  Thinking, Years, Creating

  8 Copy quote

• I've been playing music all my life, from being a choir soloist at Symphony Hall as a youngster to playing in bands through high school and college at Kent State. Went in the service at 17, out before I was 21.

  Arthur Godfrey

  School, College, Playing Music

  8 Copy quote

• Coming to understand a painting or a symphony in an unfamiliar style, to recognize the work of an artist or school, to see or hear in new ways, is as cognitive an achievement as learning to read or write or add.

  Nelson Goodman

  Writing, School, Artist

  46 Copy quote

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

  Nicholas Meyer

  Travel, Adventure, Directors

  9 Copy quote

• Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.

  E. M. Forster

  Men, Sublime, Ears

  Howards End (1910) ch. 5

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Walt Disney

  Expression, Orchestra, Canvas

  5 Copy quote

• No one can whistle a symphony.

  Halford Luccock

  6 Copy quote

• To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.

  Gustav Mahler

  Writing, World, Constructs

  20 Copy quote

• To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.

  Rita Dove

  Order, Practice, Play

  "Rita Dove On New Anthology, Advice For Young Poets". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. January 2, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.

  Aaron Copland

  Men, Long, Flow

  11 Copy quote

• We can be deeply thankful that we live in a land where reason and religion are friends and allies in the cause of liberty, joined against the evils and dangers of the day. And you can be certain of this: Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me. And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion - rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith.

  Mitt Romney

  Religious, Prayer, Land

  Faith in America, delivered 6 December 2007, College Station, TX

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• History is a symphony of echoes heard and unheard. It is a poem with events as verses.

  Charles Angoff

  Echoes, History, Events

  45 Copy quote

• A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

  Colin Wilson

  Play, Actors, Stage

  Colin Wilson (1964). “Brandy of the Damned: Discoveries of a Musical Eclectic”, London : J.Baker

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Symphony musicians are not trained in improvising, certainly not in a jazz style.

  Gunther Schuller

  Style, Musician, Jazz

  "Listen Back To A 1988 Conversation With Composer Gunther Schuller". "Fresh Air", www.npr.org. June 22, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In string theory, all particles are vibrations on a tiny rubber band; physics is the harmonies on the string; chemistry is the melodies we play on vibrating strings; the universe is a symphony of strings, and the "Mind of God" is cosmic music resonating in 11 dimensional hyperspace.

  Michio Kaku

  Play, Mind, Band

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. March 7, 2014.

  229 Copy quote

  Show source

• Dance is the music of our body, sound is the rhythm of our feeling, silence is the symphony of our soul.

  Nelly Mazloum

  Dance, Silence, Soul

  9 Copy quote

• Writing a play, you start with less, so more is demanded of you. It's as if you have to not only write a symphony, but invent the instruments as well.

  David Ives

  Writing, Play, Theatre

  10 Copy quote

• Through the open door A drowsy smell of flowers -grey heliotrope And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette Comes fairly in, and silent chorus leads To the pervading symphony of Peace.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Sweet, Peace, Flower

  7 Copy quote

• I love classical music and often listen to symphonies or opera in the morning.

  William Mapother

  Morning, Opera, Classical Music

  4 Copy quote

• ...the reader who plucks a book from her shelf only once is as deprived as the listener who, after attending a single performance of a Beethoven symphony, never hears it again.

  Anne Fadiman

  Book, Shelves, Pluck

  4 Copy quote

• The harmony of the universe knows only one musical form - the legato; while the symphony of number knows only its opposite - the staccato. All attempts to reconcile this discrepancy are based on the hope that an accelerated staccato may appear to our senses as a legato.

  Tobias Dantzig

  Opposites, Numbers, Musical

  Tobias Dantzig (2005). “Number: The Language of Science”, Dutton Juvenile

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mendelssohn never wrote any Water Music. However, he wrote the Scotch Symphony, which is even better, or at least stronger.

  Victor Borge

  Funny, Music, Humorous

  33 Copy quote

• Water, wind and birdsong were the echoes in this quiet place of a great chiming symphony that was surging around the world. Knee-deep in grasses and moon daisies, Stella stood and listened, swaying a little as the flowers and trees were swaying, her spirit voice singing loudly, though her lips were still, and every pulse in her body beating its hammer strokes in time to the song.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Song, Flower, Moon

  Elizabeth Goudge (1949). “Gentian Hill”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source