Classical Musicians Quotes

• Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Music, Wisdom, Philosophy

  Ludwig van Beethoven, Friedrich Kerst, Henry Edward Krehbiel (1964). “Beethoven, the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words”, p.13, Courier Corporation

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• Don't be a perfectionist... leave that to the classical musicians.

  Dave Brubeck

  Musician, Jazz, Perfectionist

  14 Copy quote

• A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

  Leopold Stokowski

  Inspirational, Music, Art

  Leopold Stokowski's address to an audience at Carnegie Hall, as quoted in The New York Times, May 11, 1967.

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• The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music, Appreciation, Humorous

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Music is indeed the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Music, Spiritual, Wisdom

  Attributed to Ludwig van Beethoven by Bettina von Arnim in a letter to Goethe (May 28, 1810), as quoted in Bettina von Arnim "Goethe's Correspondence with a Child", 1835.

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• All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

  Louis Armstrong

  Funny, Music, Song

  Quoted in N.Y. Times, 7 July 1971

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• A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

  Frank Zappa

  Music, Writing, Air

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.162, Simon and Schuster

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• I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

  Elvis Presley

  Music, Witty, Humorous

  Quoted in Robert Byrne, The Other 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1984)

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• I've worked with some great orchestras and amazing classical musicians, but I don't like the conceptualization of classical music as an elitist form of art.

  Serj Tankian

  Art, Musician, Orchestra

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• Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.

  Kin Hubbard

  Music, Thinking, Tunes

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• It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

  Johann Sebastian Bach

  Music, Keys, Play

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• Classical musicians go to the conservatories, rock´n roll musicians go to the garages.

  Frank Zappa

  Rocks, Musician, Rock N Roll

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• Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

  Dave Brubeck

  Voice, Musician, Chance

  40 Copy quote

• Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky were not classical musicians while they were alive and active, they were the rock stars of their day.

  Seymour Stein

  Stars, Rocks, Tchaikovsky

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Spiritual, Doing What You Love, Making Love

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Metropolitan Opera (New York, N.Y.) (1971). “Chagall at the Met”, Leon Amiel Publisher

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• All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

  Frank Zappa

  Funny, Music, People

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• I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.

  Bob Newhart

  Funny, Music, Country

  55 Copy quote

• Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Love, Marriage, Flower

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Metropolitan Opera (New York, N.Y.) (1971). “Chagall at the Met”, Leon Amiel Publisher

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• Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Music, Writing, Thank God

  Letter to Ferdinand Ries, 20 Dec. 1822

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• I've outdone anyone you can name - Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

  James Brown

  Music, Names, Tunes

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• Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

  Howard Dietz

  Inspirational, Music, Thinking

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• When you hear the melodic structures of what classical musicians put together and you compare it to that of a rock & roll record, there's a hell of a long way rock & roll has to go.

  Jimmy Page

  Rocks, Long, Together

  Source: www.rollingstone.com

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• And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage. And I think that's something that we as classical musicians have underestimated.

  Michael Tilson Thomas

  Journey, Thinking, Musician

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• Artists, whether they're classical musicians or pop musicians, they have always been the reflection of society, and in many ways a healing part of whatever is wrong in society, and I think it's important for us to continue to do that, and I don't see enough of it today.

  George Duke

  Healing, Artist, Reflection

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• You don't see the European classical musicians allowing the music of Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven to become extinct. That music has gone on for centuries and centuries. We have the same obligation. Why do we have to become so 'hip' that we can say, 'Bebop is square,' or "New Orleans is square'? This, to me, is a shame.

  Rahsaan Roland Kirk

  Squares, New Orleans, Hips

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