Symphony Quotations

Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti.

I think there's a poet who wrote once a tragedy by Shakespeare, a symphony by Beethoven and a thunderstorm are based on the same elements. I think that's a beautiful line.

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.

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?

New Year's Eve, we're going to be doing a concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Symphony Hall. It makes me feel good, because of all the people they could have had, they wanted me! We do have to do a little work with the rhythm section.

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.

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.

When I was to come to Washington the first time as Music Director of the Boston Symphony, Mrs. Johnson phoned us to find out if they could give us a party and who we would like to meet.

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

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.

I don't see myself necessarily having a burning desire to write a symphony.

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

Jazz tickles your muscles, symphonies stretch your soul.

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

Cleveland has a very bad reputation, but there's a lot of stuff that's left over from when there were very wealthy people - the Art Museum and a world class symphony that's still world class.

All these tales of people sitting down and composing symphonies just as though they were writing a letter are very much exaggerated; at least, it isn't that way in my work.

I've worked with actors before where I was like, this is not working, and then I've seen their work on the screen and I've been like, Wow, that was a really great performance. Because there are a lot of elements with film. It's not like stage. It's not a kind of performance art anymore; it's a highly tuned kind of collaboration - a symphony.

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.

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

In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.

I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.

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.

I grew up in such a musical family, and my dad was the first chair in the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra, and my mom was a piano teacher and a painter, so it was kind of a creative environment, and it was kind of in my DNA.

The first reason for starting to do the symphony concerts was to play this new piece of mine.

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

I free-form it, rock n' roll it. I'm a creature of risk, so I don't know how I'm going to explore a Beethoven symphony until I'm doing it.

I would never have become music director of the Chicago Symphony, which would have been an extremely sad loss.

Whenever I heard the song of a bird and the answering call of its mate, I could visualize the notes in scale, all built up within my consciousness as a natural symphony.

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.

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.

Most Beethoven symphonies require 80 or more instruments, and the late romantics even more.

My symphonies would have reached Opus 100 if I had but written them down... Sometimes I am so full of music, and so overflowing with melody, that I find it simply impossible to write down anything.

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

It's Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony I'm really looking forward to. Simon Rattle does it perfectly: he understands its primal rhythmic life force, and he and the wonderful Berliners make it a sheer riot of orchestral colour.

My mother was the concert master of the symphony. Absurdity and eccentricity were not criticized.

My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.

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

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.

I never want projects to be finished; I have always believed in unfinished work. I got that from Schubert, you know, the 'Unfinished Symphony.'

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.

When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer.

I tend to write short, brief snippets - I lean toward the chamber music end as opposed to the symphony end of things.

I was always the kid on scholarship, I was a soloist with my company, I'd been working with the symphony since I was 14.

But a large symphony orchestra basically is a repertory company and it has a very enormous repertoire and it is important for the performers to be able to know how to shift focus so that they instantly become part of the sound world that a particular repertoire demands.

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

Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain.

I admire Tom Ades: he's a brilliant conductor, and he gets just the right hard, brilliant sound from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for Russian music.

Regular church-goers are substantially more likely than non-attenders to read, to take newspapers and magazines, to listen to classical music, to attend symphony concerts, operas, and stage plays.

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.

It is still true that it is easier to compose a poem in the form of a manual for adjusting a VCR than it is to write a piece using just tuning as a symphony.

This is what I want in heaven... words to become notes and conversations to be symphonies.

When I do an operation, it's half a dozen people. When it goes beautifully, it's like a symphony, with everybody playing their part.

It feels like my job is to support people. I support great artists. When I worked with a symphony, I sat in the third chair, not the first chair.

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

To me it's no accident that all the symphony orchestras around the world tune up to the note A. And A is 440 cycles, except in Germany where it's 444. But the universe is 450 cycles. So what I'm trying to say is, I think it's God's voice, melody especially. Counterpoint, retrograde inversion, harmony... that's the science and the craft.

On Mars, where the air is spare - a hundred times less dense than on Earth - someone could hear you scream. But you'd have to really strain to get anyone's attention. On the Red Planet, where the wind is high-pitched and faint, even a symphony orchestra will sound as thin as cheap gruel.

It's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, 'Well, yeah,' but you start to think, 'Why not, though?' What makes one more valuable than another?

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.

When I was very young, I remember my mother telling me about a friend of hers in Germany, a pianist who played a symphony that wasn't permitted, and the Germans came up on stage and broke every finger on her hands. I grew up with stories of Nazis breaking the fingers of Jews.

On my way out here, I was writing all the way on the plane, ... and as soon as I got to San Diego, I arranged with the symphony to find an old practice room in their basement. It's better than two-thirds completed. I'd say four-fifths.

I was several times at the White House and once I arranged for a chamber group of the Boston Symphony to play at the White House.

My grade 3 teacher put on a kids' Christmas concert, and I played the kazoo, so my mother bought me a trumpet. I took lessons for eight years, was in the Kitsilano Boys Band, and I played in the Vancouver Junior Symphony for two years.

Some of it will go to have the Tupelo Symphony back with us this year.

No, I don't know how to get young people to start listening to jazz again. But I do know this: Any symphony orchestra that thinks it can appeal to under-30 listeners by suggesting that they 'should' like Schubert and Stravinsky has already lost the battle.

I have been told that a young would-be composer wrote to Mozart asking advice as to how to compose a symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a complex and demanding form and that it would be better to start with something simpler. The young man protested, 'But Herr Mozart, you wrote symphonies when you were younger than I am now.' And Mozart replied, 'I never asked how.'

When you consider that Symphony is currently limited to the niche of REO evictions and related post-foreclosure legal processes, reaching the 5,000 case mark in about a year's time is a good indicator of just how capable Symphony is, and of how well-received it has been. And, we are particularly pleased to have reached this milestone while maintaining a system uptime of over 99%, and with our users rating Symphony among the industry's best default-related technologies.

Mahler's first symphony is not a typical symphony in that it's not abstract music; it does conjure up images of nature and images of heroism.

So, I think I never slept because during the day I was rehearsing with the Cincinnati Symphony and at night I was listening to jazz.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

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.

We might actually sell out of Magnolia tickets, which has never happened before. We have 570 tickets for the event. At this point, we are approaching 500 sold. This is the largest fundraiser we do every year for the Symphony Guild, and I think this is going to be the best year ever.

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.

Our biological rhythms are the symphony of the cosmos, music embedded deep within us to which we dance, even when we can't name the tune.

Anton Bruckner wrote the same symphony nine times, trying to get it just right. He failed.

The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong; it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony.

Mozart, striving for perfection, wrote the same symphony forty-one times. In his case, it worked. He wrote a perfect symphony.

So long as we refuse to include lottery tickets among the symphonies, or medical bulletins among the overtures, we must refrain from treating the emotions as an aesthetic monopoly of music in general or a certain piece of music in particular.

There are theaters in which Italy plays a role in symphony with the United States, ... The more the Iraqis are able to ensure their own security, the easier it would be to work out the time frame and the modalities for phasing out. But they have to be decided together, not unilaterally but with a consensus.

I believe that my newly completed symphony will show the world that atonality and ugly dissonance at the price of giving up inspiration, form, expression, melody and beauty will result in ultimate disaster for the art of music.

We support the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, which does great things in the community, and we are able to promote our services to a target audience away from the hard sell.

Just the thought of a rap version of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or 'Achy, Breaky Heart' is bound to make people smile.

Recently I've been listening to Mahler; it's beautiful stuff. I just saw a performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony on television, and it was awesome. The music was so gorgeous I wasn't just crying tears, I was sobbing.

Steven is such an asset to this orchestra. Because he and I view so many aspects of music-making the same, it makes it easy for us. When I'm asking for a particular sound, he knows what I mean and he's able to communicate it technically to the string players. Steven has really helped me tremendously in our effort to make the Tucson Symphony strings sound like a major orchestra.

I think the reason for the high sales for the symphony is the fact it?s something that?s not ever here.

I remember when we did a concert after the 9/11 tragedy ? a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ? everybody just rose up 10 notches above what they normally could do ? and it was a great performance.

Jeans & Classics have a great reputation as one of the more highly rated national touring symphony pops program groups. The Jeans 'n' Classics band -- there are several of them -- do covers of great bands of the past. There's a Led Zeppelin band. They have a Beatles Band. And people really swear by them. They are very well rehearsed and they are very polished.

I wish I had three times as many tickets. The symphony office has been besieged in the last few weeks, particularly the last few days, by people asking about tickets.

It feels great to know that we rehearsed it and got it down and are finally performing it for people, ... a teenage symphony to God.

Membership has not grown. Women were once the backbone of the symphony audience, but that has shifted over the last three decades,

We're all just amazed, ... that the Seattle Symphony people have stepped forward on our behalf like this. But I know that people in the LPO would have done the same thing for them. It's a small world symphonies are like families, so we're all sort of related.

We have a great relationship with our label. We do have the creative freedom. For She Falls Asleep (a track on Wonderland) they paid for a 60-piece symphony orchestra. There are no guitars and drums on it. I don't think there is any other pop act that has that kind of freedom, and that is what separates us from the others. We are a proper pop band, and it's all our work. We are not a brand created to sell to kids, which makes us different from some of the other s**t out there.

That was very successful. It drew a younger crowd, some of whom haven't seen the symphony before. People say classical music is dying out, but I don't think that's the case.

There are some other things I'm looking for in the future. I'm getting ready to put together something, to open up a new avenue for myself, having to do with a symphony orchestra.

We're playing Mozart's 35th symphony because of the historical significance. It was the first piece the orchestra played when it started in 1982.

I don't know if this is true to you but for me sometimes it gets so bad that anything else say like looking at a bird on an overhead power line seems as great as a Beethoven symphony. then you forget it and you're back again.

the grace is being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz … anything that contains the original energy of joy.

A thing of orchestrated hell-a terrible symphony of light and flame.

What is history? Its beginning is that of the centuries of systematic work devoted to the solution of the enigma of death, so that death itself may eventually be overcome. That is why people write symphonies, and why they discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves.

The Chicago Symphony is considered the greatest orchestra in the world.

Our biological rhythms are the symphony of the cosmos.