Classical Musicians Quotes:

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

- Ludwig van Beethoven

source: Ludwig Van Beethoven, John Trie (2017). “Ludwig Van Beethoven for Classical Guitar - Tablature: Arranged for Guitar by John Trie”, p.36, BoD - Books on Demand

topic: Music, Wisdom, Philosophy, Music Life, Musical Life

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

- Dave Brubeck

topic: Musician, Jazz, Perfectionist, Classical Musicians

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

- Leopold Stokowski

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

topic: Music, Silence, Canvas, Jazz And Life, Music Life

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

topic: Music, Appreciation, People, Composing Music, Classical Composers

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

- Ludwig van Beethoven

source: 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.

topic: Music, Spiritual, Wisdom, Jazz And Life, Music And Life

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

- Louis Armstrong

topic: Funny, Music, Song, Modern Music, Folk Music

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

- Frank Zappa

topic: Music, Writing, Air, Assistance, Composing Music

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

- Elvis Presley

topic: Music, Witty, Humorous, Notes Music, Spiritual Music

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

topic: Art, Orchestra, Musician, Classical Musicians, Conceptualization

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

- Kin Hubbard

topic: Music, Thinking, Tunes, Classic Music, Classical Musicians

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

topic: Music, Play, Keys, Jazz Musician, Ignorance Is Bliss

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

- Frank Zappa

topic: Rocks, Musician, Rock N Roll, Classical Musicians, Conservatory

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

topic: Voice, Musician, Chance, Classical Musicians

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

topic: Stars, Rocks, Tchaikovsky, Classical Musicians

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

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

topic: Love, Marriage, Flower, Composing Music, Lofty

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff...Basically what people want to hear is: I love you, you love me, the leaves turn brown, they fell off the trees, the wind is blowing, it got cold, you went away, my heart broke, you came back, and my heart was okay...Modern music is people who can't think signing artists who can't write songs to make records for people who can't hear. Most people wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit them on the ass...If lyrics make people do things, how come we don't love each other?

- Frank Zappa

topic: Song, Love You, Writing, Modern Music, Signing

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

topic: Music, Country, Mean, Music Teacher, Funny Music

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

- Ludwig van Beethoven

source: Letter to Ferdinand Ries, 20 Dec. 1822

topic: Music, Writing, Thank God, Writing Music, Composing Music

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

- James Brown

topic: Music, Names, Tunes, Writing Music, Music Writing

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

- Howard Dietz

topic: Inspirational, Music, Thinking, Funny Music, Classical Musicians

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

source: Source: www.rollingstone.com

topic: Rocks, Long, Together, Classical Musicians

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

topic: Journey, Thinking, Voyages, Classical Musicians

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

topic: Healing, Artist, Reflection, Classical Musicians

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

topic: Squares, New Orleans, Bebop, Classical Musicians, Brahms

I'd been trained as a classical musician, but also as a pop musician. My teacher made sure that everything was available.

- Jeanine Tesori

source: "Composer Jeanine Tesori on Her Artistic Process and Rewarding Female Ambition". Interview with Victoria Myers, www.indiewire.com. March 27, 2015.

topic: Teacher, Musician, Classical Music, Classical Musicians

I don't really have a career as a jazz musician. I don't really have a career as a classical musician. I don't really have a career as a college professor, and yet I did all those things and I did them well. I put out some records in the 1980's and 1990's that changed the way some trumpet players played.

- Paul Smoker

topic: Player, College, Careers, Classical Musicians, College Professors

My father was a classical musician and my mother was a writer.

- John Sebastian

source: Interview with Gary James, www.theharbinger.org. October 7, 1997.

topic: Mother, Father, Musician, Classical Musicians

I would like for people to not be stuck by the rules of what is expected of a classical musician. If you really want to do something different, don't be afraid to do so. Think of music itself and not the rules or expectations of people.

- Charlie Albright

topic: Thinking, People, Expectations, Classical Musicians

I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.

- Anthony Braxton

topic: Play, African American, Musician, Classical Musicians

I think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time.

- Brian Eno

source: Interview with Mark Richardson, pitchfork.com. Nove,ber 1, 2010.

topic: Thinking, Play, Differences, Improvising, Classical Musicians