Conductor Quotes

The highest reaches of music come thrillingly close to the central core and essence of life itself.

Leopold Stokowski

Conformism is so hot on the heels of the mass-produced avant-garde that the 'ins' and the 'outs' change places with the speed of mach 3.

Igor Stravinsky

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.

The nice thing about an -ism, someone once observed, is how quickly it becomes a wasm. Some musical wasms—academic-wasm, for example, and its dependent varieties of modern-wasm and Serial-wasm—continue to linger on artifical life support, thought, and continue to threaten the increasingly fragile classical ecosystem.

Richard Taruskin

The whole duty of a conductor is comprised in his ability to indicate the right tempo.

And the works that endure and will endure for ever, the great masterpieces, cannot have come into being as humanity... imagines. Man is only the vessel into which is poured what "nature in general" wants to express.

Leroy Anderson is an American original - direct, honest, personal, idiosyncratic, and free of pretension. His music is directed to, and reflective of, the American soul.

Leroy Anderson was a crossover composer before anyone came up with the term. The voice of Leroy Anderson became the voice of the Boston Pops in its dual commitment to approachability and to excellence.