Conductor Quotes

• I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.

  Harriet Tubman

  Women, Eight, Years

  Quoted in Lyde Cullen Sizer, Divided Houses (1992)

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• The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.

  Benjamin Zander

  Inspirational, Music, Motivation

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• The great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.

  Blaine Lee Pardoe

  Leadership, Stars, Business

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• It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Light, People, Genius

  Arthur Conan Doyle (1993). “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”, p.17, Wordsworth Editions

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• A conductor has to know how to translate music into a communicative force that makes the listener want to hear what he has to say.

  Isaac Stern

  Communication, Want, Force

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• One of my central maxims is how a major part of what a conductor tries to do is get a large group of people to agree on where "now" actually is.

  Michael Tilson Thomas

  People, Trying, Groups

  "The Superconductor: SF Symphony’s Michael Tilson Thomas". Interview with Clara Jeffery, www.motherjones.com. March/April 2010.

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• 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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  Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Music, Communication, Talking

  Leonard Bernstein (1976). “The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard”, p.140, Harvard University Press

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• A conductor should guide rather than command.

  Riccardo Muti

  Guides, Should, Command

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• [As a conductor] there has to be, between me and the orchestra, an unshakable bond of trust, born out of mutual respect, through which we can spin a musical narrative that we all believe in.

  Charles Hazlewood

  Motivation, Believe, Inspiration

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• Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director.

  Michael Tilson Thomas

  Editors, Directors, Hybridity

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• Peace may sound simple - one beautiful word - but it requires everything we have, every quality, every strength, every dream, every high ideal.

  Yehudi Menuhin

  Strength, Beautiful, Dream

  US Congress Congressional Record, V. 151, PT. 6, April 21, 2005 to May 5, 2005, p. 7471, 2009.

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• I think it's a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra - especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music.

  Gustavo Dudamel

  Player, Thinking, Feelings

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• Perhaps the chief requirement of [the conductor] is that he be humble before the composer; that he never interpose himself between the music and the audience; that all his efforts, however strenuous or glamorous, be made in the service of the composer's meaning - the music itself, which, after all, is the whole reason for the conductor's existence.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Humble, Effort, Requirements

  "The Cambridge Companion to Conducting". Book by José Antonio Bowen (p. 16), November 20, 2003.

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• Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.

  Richard Wagner

  Music, Looks, Opera Singing

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• There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.

  Thomas Beecham

  Funny, Music, Two

  In Harold Atkins and Archie Newman Beecham Stories (1978) p. 27

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• Have you seen a symphony orchestra? There is a person at the back carrying a triangle. Now and again the conductor will point to him or her and that person will play "ting." That might seem so insignificant, but in the conception of the composer something irreplaceable would be lost to the total beauty of the symphony if that "ting" did not happen.

  Desmond Tutu

  Play, Symphony, Community

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• Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

  George Szell

  Music, Giving, Jazz And Life

  Newsweek 28 Jan. 1963

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• I've been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that's a job where I don't think sex plays much part.

  Nadia Boulanger

  Music, Jobs, Sex

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

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• The principal task of a conductor is not to put himself in evidence but to disappear behind his functions as much as possible. We are pilots, not servants.

  Franz Liszt

  Tasks, Pilots, Disappear

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• Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Communication, Two, Technique

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• The most important thing for the conductor is that he or she listens. Her listening will make things sound a certain way. If the conductor listens well, the musicians listen each other better. The conductor can in effect impose a certain kind of listening for everybody.

  Laurence Equilbey

  Listening, Important, Musician

  "There Will Be Joy". Interview with Lydia Perović, logger.believermag.com. August 1, 2013.

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• Music is a labyrinth with no beginning and no end,
  full of new paths to discover,
  where mystery remains eternal

  Pierre Boulez

  Music, Discovery, Labyrinth

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• To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.

  Nadia Boulanger

  Music, Creativity, Breaking Rules

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• A good conductor ought to be a good chauffeur; the qualities that make the one also make the other. They are concentration, an incessant control of attention, and presence of mind; the conductor only has to add a little sense of music.

  Sergei Rachmaninoff

  Presence Of Mind, Quality, Add

  "Rachmaninoff's Recollections". Book by Oskar von Riesemann, p. 155, 1934.

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