Symphony Quotes - Page 6

• I learned from my uncle that jazz, like symphony music, was built to last.

  David Amram

  Uncles, Lasts, Jazz

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• I grew up a Red Sox fan. I grew up going to Fenway Park and the Museum of Fine Arts and the Science Museum and Symphony Hall and going to the Common, walking around. My whole family at different times lived and worked in Boston.

  James Spader

  Art, Museums, Boston

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony.

  Jacques Barzun

  Cutting, Air, Desire

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• Last year, more Americans went to symphonies than went to baseball games. This may be viewed as an alarming statistic, but I think that both baseball and the country will endure.

  John F. Kennedy

  Country, Baseball, Thinking

  John F. Kennedy, Dominique Enright (2003). “The Wicked Wit of John F. Kennedy”, Michael O'Mara Books

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• I see that you believe in love such as the poets and romancers have represented... The poets represent love as the sculptors design beauty, as the musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of nature.... To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is the same thing as to seek on the public squares such a woman as Venus or to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.

  Alfred de Musset

  Love, Beautiful, Real

  Alfred de Musset (2012). “The Confession of a Child of the Century”, p.46, tredition

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• Over the years it has been my privilege to lead performances with Saint Louis, the National Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra and so many other wonderful organizations.

  Leonard Slatkin

  Years, Organization, Orchestra

  Leonard Slatkin (2017). “Leading Tones: Reflections on Music, Musicians, and the Music Industry”, p.200, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• I hear the wind among the trees Playing the celestial symphonies; I see the branches downward bent, Like keys of some great instrument.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Nature, Clouds, Keys

  Anonymous, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “A Day With Longfellow”, Library of Alexandria

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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, Community, Would Be

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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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• Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords whose tones we are about to harmonize.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Mind, Tone, Chords

  "Curiosities of Literature". Book by Isaac D'Israeli, 1791.

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• How full and rich a world
  Theirs to inhabit is--
  Sweet scent of grass and bloom,
  Playmates' glad symphony,
  Cool touch of western wind,
  Sunshine's divine caress.
  How should they know or feel
  They are in darkness?
  But, oh, the miracle!
  If a Redeemer came,
  Laid finger on their eyes--
  One touch and what a world,
  New-born in loveliness!

  Israel Zangwill

  Sweet, Children, Eye

  Israel Zangwill (1903). “Blind Children”

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• If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.

  Gustav Mahler

  Writing, Way, Ifs

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• Revolution is only truly revolution if it is a continuous struggle-not just an external struggle against an enemy, but an inner struggle, fighting and subduing all negative aspects which hinder or do damage to the course of the revolution. In this light, revolution is ... a mighty symphony of victory over the enemy and over oneself.

  Sukarno

  Struggle, Fighting, Light

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• In truth, I became a conductor because deep down I wanted to conduct Brahmss four symphonies and Richard Strausss tone poems.

  Zubin Mehta

  Four, Tone, Wanted

  Zubin Mehta, Renate v Matuschka (2009). “Zubin Mehta: The Score of My Life”, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• I hear entire symphonies, oratorios, in my head, but I can't write a note.

  Alan Dean Foster

  Writing, Notes, I Can

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• Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kowtow before any United States proconsul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.

  Andrei Gromyko

  Country, Turkeys, Netherlands

  New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1953.

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• Around us the night creatures have their say. We are surrounded by a symphony of crickets and frogs. Neither of us feels the need to speak, and I suppose that is one of the qualities I find comforting in Kartik. We can be alone together.

  Libba Bray

  Night, Comforting, Quality

  Libba Bray (2010). “The Sweet Far Thing”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

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• The universe is a symphony of strings, and the mind of God that Einstein eloquently wrote about for thirty years would be cosmic music resonating through eleven-dimensional hyper space.

  Michio Kaku

  Space, Years, Mind

  Interview with Deepak Chopra, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 16, 2010.

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• From the explanatory notes that Willson wrote to accompany his symphony, A Symphony of San Francisco,: "Generally speaking, the first movement is intended to convey pioneer courage, loyalty, strength of purpose and freedom." The trumpet motive in the closing Allegro "is a call of defiance to the very elements themselves that had the temerity to dispute the spiritual strength and courage of the golden city of the West."

  Meredith Willson

  Loyalty, Spiritual, Freedom

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• taking her hand he led her out into a broad stretch of hard sandy soil that the moon flooded with great splendor. They floated out like drifting moths under the rich hazy light, and as the fantastic symphony wept and exulted and wavered and despaired, Ardita's last sense of reality dropped away, and she abandonded her imagination to the dreamy summer scents of tropial flowers and the infinite starry spaces overhead, feeling that if she opened her eyes it would be to find herself dancing with a ghost in a land created by her own fantasy.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Summer, Flower, Eye

  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.1640, e-artnow

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• Moving pictures need sound as much as Beethoven symphonies need lyrics.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Moving, Sound, Needs

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• I would advise my young colleagues, the composers of symphonies, to drop in sometimes at the kindergarten, too. It is there that it is decided whether there will be anybody to understand their works in twenty years time.

  Zoltan Kodaly

  Years, Twenties, Sometimes

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• As a composer and as a musician I'm a true believer - and this is not to be overly diplomatic - I'm a believer that there's artistry in everything from a lawn gnome to a desk chair to a symphony to an Andy Warhol painting. There's art in absolutely everything.

  Darren Criss

  Art, Musician, Painting

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• The world values the seer above all men, and has always done so. Nay, it values all men in proportion as they partake of the character of seers. The Elgin Marbles and a decision of John Marshall are valued for the same reason. What we feel in them is a painstaking submission to facts beyond the author's control, and to ideas imposed on him by his vision. So with Beethoven's Symphonies, with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations - with any conceivable output of the human mind of which you approve. You love them because you say, These things were not made, they were seen.

  John Jay Chapman

  Character, Men, Ideas

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• Off to one side sits a group of shepherds. They sit silently on the floor, perhaps perplexed, perhaps in awe, no doubt in amazement. Their night watch had been interrupted by an explosion of light from heaven and a symphony of angels. God goes to those who have time to hear him-and so on this cloudless night he went to simple shepherds.

  Max Lucado

  Christmas, Angel, Simple

  Max Lucado (2010). “God Came Near Deluxe Edition”, p.4, Thomas Nelson Inc

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