20th-century Conductor Quotes

Opera is everything rolled into one—music, theater, the dance, color and voices and theatrical illusions.

One can create a masterpiece by using any means of expression, no matter how absurd, just as one can make a beautiful gesture lying at the edge, or even the bottom, of a precipice.

Witold Lutosławski

The most perfect expression of human behaviour is a string quartet.

Compassion is the litmus test and culminating touchstone of a spirituality of Earth.

I'm so sorry for you; your lives have been so easy. You can't play great music unless your heart's been broken.

Benjamin Zander

With the new technology that keeps entering the media, film composers are constantly being placed in new learning situations. Acknowledging this and realizing that one must keep up, I maintain, nonetheless, that the real creative power is in the mind and heart of the composer.

Schooling, by definition, must be conservative. It is naturally dependent on an older generation's level of knowledge and sense of values.

From the time I could play the piano, I remember trying to write tunes. They were in my head, and I would just sit down and start noodling. Next thing I knew, I had written a melody.

Marvin Hamlisch

Music, as long as it exists, will always take its departure from the major triad and return to it. The musician cannot escape it any more than the painter his primary colors or the architect his three dimensions.

Creativity in all forms of life, from arts to business to domestic situations, depends on our ability to recognize and explore gaps

You can't just take kids off the streets, put them in a hall, and expect them to know how to react.... During my first season, while I was conducting a youth concert, one kid went through a plate glass window and two bathrooms were totally destroyed...

In your life expect some trouble
When you worry you make it double.