20th-century Conductor Quotes

New Orleans is a city of paradox. Sin, salvation, sex, sanctification, so intertwined yet so separate.

Harry Connick, Jr.

Nothing is so common as to see a political upheaval pass practically unnoticed merely because the names of the leaders and their parties remain the same.

Constant Lambert

I gave you my arms, my lips, my heart,
My love, my life, my all,
But the best that I had to offer you
I found was all too small.

In all teaching there must be a fusion of authority as an adult providing a stable framework for the children in one's care, and humility as another human being ready to educate an equal who may turn out to be a superior.

First of all, when you enter a conservatory, it's already too late. The kind of connection that has to be made with an instrument, be it a piano, strings, a wind instrument, it really has to start much younger – five, six, seven - eight years-old is already getting late. The instrument must really become an extension of yourself. That neuromuscular connection between intention and realization is something that really has to be started very young. And the years between nine or ten and twenty, that's when one should learn the whole repertoire.

You put your right arm in,
Your right arm out
In, out, in, out and shake it all about.
You do the hokey cokey and you turn around,
And that's what it's all about.

Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous.

But one day, when I was still young, I was parted from my family and left my native country. I hunted and searched for music, and destiny turned me into the object of my hunt. The circumstances of life became my 'antlers' and prevented me from returning home.

I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like, I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers.

Benjamin Britten

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.

A New York City taxi driver asked him where to go; Karajan replied "No matter - I am in demand everywhere."

Herbert von Karajan

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