Virtuoso Quotes

• Behind every brilliant performance there were countless hours of practice and preparation.

  Eric Butterworth

  Success, Practice, Achievement

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• The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always the hope that something dangerous may happen.

  Claude Debussy

  Crowds, Circus, Dangerous

  "Music in the Modern World". Book by Rollo Hugh Myers, 1948.

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• For the virtuoso, musical works are in fact nothing but tragic and moving materializations of his emotions; he is called upon to make them speak, weep, sing and sigh, to recreate them in accordance with his own consciousness. In this way he, like the composer, is a creator, for he must have within himself those passions that he wishes to bring so intensely to life.

  Franz Liszt

  Moving, Passion, Musical

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• By many peoples' standards, my playing is very primitive but by punk standards, I'm a virtuoso.

  Robert Quine

  Punk, Standards, Primitive

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• I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think and novelists to see what I could get away with.

  Christopher Hampton

  Lying, Thinking, Deception

  "Dangerous Liaisons". www.imdb.com. 1988.

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• Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable cacophony.

  Thomas Bernhard

  Together, Add, Cacophony

  Thomas Bernhard (2013). “Concrete”, p.61, Faber & Faber

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• What is the best music is impossible to define. Just because it's played by a virtuoso player, doesn't mean it's great music. It might not reflect the soul of a people, which is really my criteria for great music.

  Mickey Hart

  Mean, Player, People

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• When a pianist sits down and does a virtuoso performance he is in a technical sense transmitting more information to a machine than any other human activity involving machinery allows.

  Robert Moog

  Doe, Machines, Down And

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• I have never learned to read or write music so I am not a virtuoso musician like the others you mentioned. I am completely unable to play like them because I never learned classical music, I just developed my own crazy style!

  Ken Hensley

  Crazy, Writing, Play

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• EXTREMELY FUNNY! A SUPER-VIRTUOSO! I expected to enjoy 'The Two and Only,' but I didn't expect to be touched, much less to find my eyes growing moist.

  Terry Teachout

  Eye, Two, Growing

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• At some point, I had to make a decision: I could practice more and become a really great guitar player or I could work on writing better songs. There are only so many hours in the day, and I found writing songs more fulfilling than working on becoming this virtuoso guitar player.

  James Iha

  Song, Writing, Player

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• When I began, the guitar was en-closed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, be-cause there were no virtuoso guitarists.

  Andres Segovia

  Writing, Guitar, Circles

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• Fundamentally I feel that there is as much difference between the stage and the films as between a piano and a violin. Normally you can't become a virtuoso in both.

  Ethel Barrymore

  Music, Piano, Differences

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• It was a really interesting time in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, and the music scene was really, really interesting because you didn't have to be a virtuoso to make music, it was more about your desire to express things.

  Jim Jarmusch

  New York, Interesting, Desire

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. November 15, 1999.

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• The professionalism of technique and flash of dexterity are more comfortable to be around than raw creative power, hence our society generally rewards virtuoso performers more highly than it rewards original creators.

  Stephen Nachmanovitch

  Creative, Rewards, Our Society

  Stephen Nachmanovitch (1991). “Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art”, p.120, Penguin

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• A genius! For 37 years I've practised fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a genius!

  Pablo de Sarasate

  Years, Practice, Musician

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• I sometimes, in my sprightly moments, consider myself, in my great chair at school, as some dictator at the head of a commonwealth. In this little state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. I have several renowned generals but three feet high, and several deep-projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles, cockleshells, etc., with as ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the Royal Society.

  John Adams

  School, Knowledge, Feet

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1850). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.9

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• Play slow and perfect - that’s the way to becoming a virtuoso.

  Steve Vai

  Play, Perfect, Way

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• It [Christian Social Party] recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents.

  Adolf Hitler

  Christian, Religious, Party

  Adolf Hitler (1971). “Mein Kampf”, Mariner Books

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• Where we are from... [s]tories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he'd be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change.

  Adam Johnson

  Wise, Men, Piano

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• Well, Mozart is extraordinary not only in that he became virtuoso along the lines of his father, but that he had that compositional gift, that melodic gift. By the time he was four, he was doing piano concertos with harmony in the background.

  Twyla Tharp

  Father, Piano, Four

  "A Conversation With Choreographer Twyla Thar". Interview with Daviv Shenk, www.theatlantic.com. February 26, 2010.

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• I'm not a virtuoso on an instrument. You know, I'm not always singing in pitch. I laugh sometimes my way through the shows, but I'm an honest songwriter who's always tried to bring the audience with me on my journey in hopes that they see their own lives reflected in the work.

  Jason Mraz

  Journey, Laughing, Singing

  "Talk Asia". www.cnn.com. November 16, 2012.

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• The stories in Get In Trouble confirm once again that Kelly Link is a modern virtuoso of the form-playful and subversive required reading for anyone who loves short fiction.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Short Love, Reading, Fiction

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• It is one thing to be a virtuoso, but a different thing to play with compassion.

  Vijay Iyer

  Compassion, Play, Different

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Two simple principles lie at the bottom of the whole matter, and they may be precipitated into two rules. The first is that, when there is a choice, the milder drink is always the better-not merely the safer but the better. The second is that no really enlightened drinker ever takes a drink at a time when he has any work to do. There is, of course, more to it than this; but these are sufficient for the beginner, and even the virtuoso never outgrows them.

  H. L. Mencken

  Lying, Drinking, Simple

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