Classical Music Quotes

I used to like to set different film clips to classical music, not even my own songs, but make little movies. ~ Lana Del Rey

Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us - no walking around National Trust properties or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in mines and slums without literacy or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor - that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better later. We live now - for our own instant hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio. ~ Caitlin Moran

I started listening to classical music when I was in my early teens. Prior to that, I listened to pop records or band records. ~ Stephen Sondheim

Classical music gradually lost popularity because it is too complicated: you need twenty-five or thirty skilled musicians just to hum it properly. So people began to develop regular music. ~ Dave Barry

I heard Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and that was it. I didn't ever want to be anything else. I just started banging away and semi-studied classical music at the Royal Academy of Music but sort of half-heartedly. ~ Elton John

Classical music is one of the best things that ever happened to mankind. If you get introduced to it in the right way, it becomes your friend for life. ~ Yo-Yo Ma

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music. ~ Nina Simone

I love Adele and Lykke Li. I also listen to classical music as well. ~ Birdy

We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones. ~ Patti Smith

As far as doing TV, I do think there's a big audience out there that could enjoy classical music, but they don't know how to find it, and sometimes by doing different things ... crossover things probably make up about 5% of what I do. ~ Joshua Bell

A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it. ~ Thomas Beecham

I think one of the reasons it ended was that his eyes never lit up for me the way they did for classical music. I realize that in the long run I may not be as wonderful as a Brahms symphony but I think I'm good for a Haydn quintet. ~ Daniel Handler

English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was the music from the streets. ~ Yann Martel

I have loads of issues with the way classical music is presented. It has been too reverential, too 'high art' - if you're not in the club, they're not going to let you join. It's like The Turin Shroud: don't touch it because it might fall apart. ~ Charles Hazlewood

Jazz isn't like pop, where you sell millions of records with a hit. Your spirit and soul aren't important in pop music. But jazz is like classical music. If people like you, they'll remember you and you'll last forever. ~ Freddie Hubbard

I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about ... Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important. ~ Nina Simone

I was able to turn to classical music many people, who saw my programs live and on YouTube, and this is one of the nicest achievements I can have. ~ Aleksey Igudesman

It'll help you be imaginative if you listen to classical music. It helps you understand dynamics and how important they are to create an environment. ~ Brittany Howard

Every so often, I feel I should graduate to classical music, properly. But the truth is, I'm more likely to listen to rock music. ~ Tony Blair

I listen to classical music very much. There's a lot of jazz that I don't enjoy listening to. ~ Lee Konitz

Indian food is like classical music raga- it takes time to build up to a crescendo. ~ Shobhaa De

We, however, have all kinds of different ideas about what happiness is. Some must go bungee jumping to experience a rush of joy, while others find bliss staying home. Some are happy in a concert hall, listening to classical music, while children on a playground could be music to the ears of others. Some people experience elation when they solve a complicated equation, while for others a cancelled math class is a happy childhood memory. ~ Haim Shapira

At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music. ~ Satyajit Ray

What about concerts and opera performances? Nowadays these bring him little pleasure [...] These people have no interest in classical music - they would much prefer operettas or films with Marika Rokk[...]
How can he possibly enjoy music under such circumstances? What good is it to invite the finest musicians and conductors of the Reich to Prague, when they must perform for such uneducated audience, who applaud only dutifully and never with enthusiasm. And, of course, the artists sense this immediately; they have a well-developed instinct about their audiences. Therefore, they play and sing any old way, without distinction. ~ Jiří Weil

I write my music with the idea that it will appeal to all of those people, and I want them to go in with all the history that's within all of us - all the things that they've listened to in the backs of their minds, whether it's country music or minimal techno, or classical music or whatever. I want them to bring that excitement, that love, or that hate, or whatever it might be, to my music. I feel that my music draws on so many different things. ~ Missy Mazzoli

I've always been a lover of classical music ever since I was an early teenager I suppose. I remember the very first piece of classical music that grabbed me was I bought an LP of Daniel Barenboim performing Mozart's piano concertos and I would have been about 14 or 15 at the time and I remember I played it over and over again. ~ George Brandis

Classical music is at odds with contemporary culture precisely because of its insistence on the tension between the bodily and intellectual, the material and the spiritual, the thinglike and its transcendence in thought. A culture that is merely sensuous and that denies the activity of the mind within sensuous materials risks becoming pornographic. ~ Julian Johnson

Classical music is an unbroken, living tradition that goes back over 1,000 years, and every one of those years has had something unique and powerful to say to us about what it's like to be alive. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas

I love dancing to the radio every morning, to start the day with such passion. Otherwise, life is too sad. My little daughter and I like dancing to classical music: Bach and Schubert. ~ Anna Mouglalis

Jazz will be the classical music of the future. ~ Dizzy Gillespie

It's wonderful doing concerts in places like New York and London, but I feel a responsibility to also bring my work home, to bring world-class, classical music to Somerset. ~ Charles Hazlewood

That's what happens when you study men: you find mare's nests. I happen to believe that you can't study men; you can only get to know them, which is quite a different thing. Because you study them, you want to make the lower orders govern the country and listen to classical music, which is balderdash. You also want to take away from them everything which makes life worth living and not only from them but from everyone except a parcel of prigs and professors. ~ C.S. Lewis

Obviously there are pieces of classical music that are some of the most beautiful music ever written, for me anyway is a lot of classical or contemporary music, so it's a different kind of space that you enter when you're listening to it. ~ Bryce Dessner

I love Gustavo Dudamel and I love what he does for classical music, and I love what he comes out of, El Sistema and the old man Abreu. When we were in Venezuela, I had the chance to go to his building. He had, like, five or six orchestras playing of kids from the hood playing, like, Mahler's third symphony and Shostakovich fifth and Beethoven. Man, it's unbelievable. I mean, they could play. ~ Wynton Marsalis

I've making videos since I was seventeen I was originally discollecting vintage hmmm ... footages from different archives and setting moving pictures to classical music clips that meant a lot to me. Maybe there were places I have been where nice things have happened. I had a vision of making my life a work of art and I was looking for people who also felt that way. ~ Lana Del Rey

The classical music is soothing and stimulating, good for thinking. ~ Rolonda Watts

When I'm 40, too old to be a rock star, I plan to go back to college to study classical music. ~ Chris Martin

What is classical music if not the epitome of sensuality, passion, and understated erotica that popular music, even with all of its energy and life, cannot even begin to touch? ~ Lara St. John

It's a small community, the classical music community, along with the excitement of new places and new things and this feeling of being at home wherever you go because that's where your community is. ~ Joshua Roman

I don't know if it's a sign of all the chaos that is happening out there or not, but I've lately craved the structure and order of classical music, the balance and symmetry. ~ Helen Reddy

Often in the morning I will sit in a favorite chair in my study with a cup of coffee, with classical music playing, not trying to form a prayer with words but waiting, listening, until perhaps I sense the Spirit bringing to the surface a word from God. Then I offer just a simple 'Thank you.' ~ Leighton Ford

Whatever comes, I'll take the good--and send the rest to hell. ~ Ignaz Schnitzer

Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European music. ~ Sonny Rollins

I have no doubt that there are great people about though ... the thing of it is, nothing to this day moves me like classical music (Debussy, Vaughn Williams). ~ Gary Lucas

It is interesting that our biggest fans are the greatest names of the classical music scene, such as Julian Rachlin, Janine Jansen, Mischa Maisky and Gidon Kremer. They even make guest appearances in our concerts occasionally. ~ Aleksey Igudesman

We Gonna Win' is a song of triumph, It represents my personal belief that with hard work, talent and dedication, everything is possible. It's a one of a kind marriage between rap and classical music, where the music doesn't accompany the vocalist, but rather stands on its own. ~ Miri Ben-Ari

Robert Kapilow is a born teacher, an enthusiast who can think on his feet, a 110 percent believer in the project at hand ... It's a cheering thought that this kind of missionary enterprise did not pass from this earth with Leonard Bernstein. Robert Kapilow is awfully good at what he does. We need him. ~ The Boston Globe

I like to listen to a lot of classical music when I'm painting, the most simplistic stuff I can find. I like simple piano. ~ Danny Fox

I'm very fond of classical music, especially Mozart. I find it relaxes me and helps me concentrate. ~ Guler Sabanci

As Duke Ellington once said, "There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind." In that sense, jazz and classical music are fundamentally the same. The pure joy one experiences listening to "good" music transcends questions of genre. ~ Haruki Murakami

I got so much love for classical music and I hear so much incredible music.You should know a bunch of music and have respect for all sorts of genres and styles of music. ~ Bruno Mars

I would not want the limitations held by the name of a classical musician. I want many people to enjoy my music much beyond just classical music fans. I think the term, 'violinist,' keeps me distant from the audience. I want to communicate with them more. ~ Ji-Hae Park

I have a piano in my living room that I mess around on a little bit and when I asked Len [Wiseman] if I could find a piece of music, I went through a **** load of classical music to find something that I felt had a certain urgency to it, but also with a hint of melancholia and maybe a sense of longing. I found that which is public domain and I had a piano teacher to go through it with me. ~ Colin Farrell

I'm saddened to see that everyone's pitched out the baby with the bath, in that we say that it can't be one or the other, it could be both. I mean, just because we listen to classical music doesn't mean that we can't listen to jazz. ~ Don Bluth

The musical instuments may be western but my voice never wavers away from my own ragas. it is good to make experiments and I do a lot of them but my thoughts always round the centre and that centre is the tradition of my elders and it is classical music.. ~ Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

When the middle classes get passionate about politics, they're arguing about their treats - their tax breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they're fighting for their lives.
Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, more animalistic. No classical music for us - no walking around National Trust properties or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in means, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor - that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better later. We live now - for our instant, hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio.
You must never, never forget when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad post code. It's a miracle when someone from a bad post code gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all. ~ Caitlin Moran

Frankly, I can't understand people who want to put down a certain type of music, whatever that might be. Classical music was pop music in its own age. It's a matter of taste and understanding - there's no good or bad, there's no highbrow or lowbrow. ~ Min Yoongi (SUGA Of BTS)

You cannot go wrong by learning classical music because it trains the ear. ~ Kiesza

I wasn't listening to that much classical music - not much more than anything else. I was really lucky to have parents who loved all kinds of music. ~ Cecile McLorin Salvant

I definitely want to act, but I also want to score movies, and I have this idea to fuse classical music with other styles that would give it a different perception. ~ Alicia Keys

Jazz is America's classical music. ~ Billy Taylor

I've been extremely lucky to work with Elmer Bernstein, Howard Shore over the years, but I've always imagined films with my own scores, because I don't come from that world or that period of filmmaking. And so how could I make up my own score on a film like this where it isn't necessarily made up of popular music from the radio or the period; it isn't necessarily classical music. But what if it's modern symphonic music? ~ Martin Scorsese

I've always been heavily influenced by classical music, mostly by baroque music. ~ Yngwie Malmsteen

The Classic games were Classic because, like classical music or architecture, they strove to give life and weight to ideals of order and proportion, to provide a vision of timelessness. In 'Double Dragon,' we can see the cracks in the brick, the mold growing on the drainage pipes, the unmistakable deterioration of the world we live in. ~ D. B. Weiss

Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and even blacks sang in the opera. Something like country music was what lynch mobs must have enjoyed while stringing up their black victims. Country music was not necessarily lynching music, but no other music could be imagined as lynching's accompaniment. Beethoven's Ninth was the opus for Nazis, concentration camp commanders, and possibly President Truman as he contemplated atomizing Hiroshima, classical music the refined score for the high-minded extermination of brutish hordes. Country music was set to the more humble beat of the red-blooded, bloodthirsty American heartland. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line ~ Duke Ellington

In the background, classical music plays from a paint-splattered radio, the New York station with the ancient announcer more frequently heard in doctors' waiting rooms and other places where signs prohibit the use of cell phones – the last bastions of Beethoven or Chopin or, on racier days, Shostakovich. ~ Kate Walbert

We are the conductors of the beauty of the orchestra of our inner lives. Keep a Händel on it and don't hold Bach! ~ Tom Althouse

I like classical music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and I adore Bach above all. ~ Gregory Maguire

When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands. ~ Moby

Growing up with country, R&B, gospel, and classical music from my grandmother and pop, Tuskegee was the perfect melting pot for my influences as a writer. ~ Lionel Richie

Classical music is a genre of music. It's no more complex or less complex than pop music or R&B. The elitism is weird. ~ Theo Hutchcraft

The only difference between death and love, one supposedly lasts forever, the other makes you think of classical music. ~ Mark Cirino

I am a classical music lover - not necessarily the contemporary stuff, but the old stuff. ~ Eberhard Weber

A lot of people may not know how competitive it is to play classical music, because when you think about it, the music that you're playing is music that's been here for years. And all you're trying to do is improve upon it when you play. ~ Jamie Foxx

I enjoy listening to classical music and heavy metal. I play basketball and try to go diving at least once a year. I don't really have hobbies in the traditional sense ... I engage in too many activities already through the actions of my characters. ~ Alan Dean Foster

I became a professional musician and played all kinds of music. I played bluegrass, I played classical music, and for many years, I played jazz. ~ Terry Teachout

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way. ~ PJ Harvey

It is so important for people at a young age to be invited to embrace classical music and opera. ~ Luciano Pavarotti

I wouldn't know anything about opera music if it wasn't for Bugs Bunny. That was my entire introduction to opera music. I wouldn't know anything about classical music if it wasn't for "Fantasia." They didn't have to do that stuff. They chose to base this ridiculous, funny, intriguing, creative story on this beautiful classical music. It's the combination of the high and the low that I thought was very cool. But I had no concept of it as a kid. ~ Jon Hamm

Listening to classical music is like reading philosophy books, not everybody has to do it. Music is not for everybody. ~ Krzysztof Penderecki

My family were all into classical music, and I found that very intimidating. ~ Elizabeth McGovern

Injustice, large and small, was like sour, moldy bread. Consumed often enough, it brought on hunger for the meat of revenge. ~ B.V. Lawson

I've got a lot of things that are probably obvious, not much outside the box right now. But, I have been listening to a lot of classical music lately for some reason. I used to do that a lot when I was doing cabinet making in New England. I've sort of returned to that for some reason. That might be surprising to people. ~ Hal Ketchum

My music is best understood by children and animals. ~ Igor Stravinsky

You both love Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Hawthorne and Melville, Flaubert and Stendahl, but at that stage of your life you cannot stomach Henry James, while Gwyn argues that he is the giant of giants, the colossus who makes all other novelists look like pygmies. You are in complete harmony about the greatness of Kafka and Beckett, but when you tell her that Celine belongs in their company, she laughs at you and calls him a fascist maniac. Wallace Stevens yes, but next in line for you is William Carlos Williams, not T.S. Eliot, whose work Gwyn can recite from memory. You defend Keaton, she defends Chaplin, and while you both howl at the sight of the Marx Brothers, your much-adored W.C. Fields cannot coax a single smile from her. Truffaut at his best touches you both, but Gwyn finds Godard pretentious and you don't, and while she lauds Bergman and Antonioni as twin masters of the universe, you reluctantly tell her that you are bored by their films. No conflicts about classical music, with J.S. Bach at the top of the list, but you are becoming increasingly interested in jazz, while Gwyn still clings to the frenzy of rock and roll, which has stopped saying much of anything to you. She likes to dance, and you don't. She laughs more than you do and smokes less. She is a freer, happier person than you are, and whenever you are with her, the world seems brighter and more welcoming, a place where your sullen, introverted self can almost begin to feel at home. ~ Paul Auster

History's greatest composers world be rolling in their graves if they knew that their beautiful compositions were reduced to distorted hold music. ~ Michael P. Naughton

I'm sure there are a few things in my CD collection that might surprise people. I like classical music, the blues, and I'm a big fan of alternative rock. ~ Brad Paisley

I was born out of classical music. ~ Mika.

I love singing jazz. I don't like the idea that classical music should be over here and jazz should be someplace else. It's all wonderful, and we should be open to enjoying it all. ~ Jessye Norman

I think the classical music is on a dangerous downward slope, because it's not seeking strong enough resonance with its society. ~ Laurence Equilbey

education and money. I go to church with the kids for the same reason Genie and I play our grandchildren classical music and litter the floors and chairs all over our home with open art books. Jack, age three, eats his lunch with a big Goya book propped in front of him asking for the ~ Frank Schaeffer

Violin for me is a great instrument because you can use it as a rhythmical instrument and also as a melodic instrument ... You can pretty much do everything with the violin. Sometimes I feel classical music limits the violin. ~ David Garrett

My father is doing a radio program - classical music. He has a beautiful speaking voice and that's his passion in life, his music. My mother lives in Melbourne and is an avid photographer. She's also started writing for a magazine out there and she submits poems, very funny ones, and articles. In some way or other, my family is always doing something with the media. ~ Olivia Newton-John

I grew up listening to - it's kind of embarrassing - all classical music. ~ Caroline Shaw

I'm pretty optimistic about the future of rock ... it will be back to composition as in classical music or jazz. ~ Jimmy Page

I've never approached classical music in a formal way, ever. I couldn't read very well. I'd have to play every piece and internalize it, almost as if I had written it myself. ~ Andrew Bird

Actually, I've had very little classical training, although I love listening to classical music very much. ~ Benny Green

I also like Western classical music and jazz. ~ Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Jazz isn't dead yet. It's the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it's a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it's coming out of the U.S., it's not going to survive unless it's got some jazz influence. ~ Dave Brubeck