Top 1200 Classical Music Quotes & Sayings

Indian classical music is charming and currently there are a wide range of musicians who bring great classical tunes to the Bollywood industry.

The reality for me is simple. When music is written, it is usually categorized as classical. When it is improvised, it can still be called classical if it is an inspired improvisation. In either category, it is still music, and it can be good or bad or simply mediocre.

You know I'm a bit of a dag because I listen to classical music. I recently bought myself an iPod and downloaded every piece of classical music that I had access to onto that.

Western classical music and classical dance gel beautifully.

My background in music is classical - I did graduate school in music. At that time, I was studying composition, but I was studying classical guitar very seriously.

Classical music only really came into my life in 1969. I wish I had heard classical music and church music when I was a teenager or even as a child.

I grew up listening to my parents' albums. Many of them were either classical - Bach, Beethoven and Brahms - or easy listening, like Mantovani. I loved the spectrum of emotions in classical music, from fortissimo to pianissimo. My early passion for classical made my drumming more musical later on.

But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean.

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

My mom was an opera singer. She did all the classical music, and I heard it. I know every opera. I know every classical piece of music.

I did classical music when I was a teenager, but the experience of performing a classical concert felt too frighteningly pristine for me to continue with it.

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

I feel that classical music should be a more recognizable part of everyone’s entertainment. It has been my hope that through live concerts, motion pictures, recordings, international competitions, and interesting public forums, a larger group of people will learn to love classical music and attend live concert performances.

Maybe I'm genetically more inclined to music - but the music I make is so far removed from Indian classical music. I grew up in Texas!

When I was growing up, until I was 18 or 19, I was totally invested in the classical music world. I had no concept of anything else. The closest thing to a cool band I listened to was Radiohead. Radiohead were the only band I liked in high school. I was just obsessed with classical music, opera, Claude Debussy, and that kind of stuff.

But classical music is not entertainment, and I feel viciously strong about that. Classical music is forever. Entertainment is something that is here today, and may be gone tomorrow.

My training in music has been very eclectic - as first a flute player from classical chamber music to jazz, Greek, Brazilian and African music to contemporary concert music.

My influences are jazz, blues, European classical music; they are rock music and pop music. So many kinds of music. World music from different countries like India and China. I think that would be a shame not to take advantage and do something... not unique, because I don't have this pretension.

My basic grammar is in Indian classical music, Carnatic music, and Hindustani music, but I don't believe that that is the only form of music I will learn. I don't believe in that, because I am a very open minded person.

'The Shining' is operatic and sensational and... really shocking. It has this amazing meld of classical music and modern interpretations of classical music, and incredible imagery. From the set design to the costumes, there's so much to unpack.

I think if there's ever been a time we need music more, it's now. For our kids, it teaches you to take time, to listen, to work together, to listen to other people, and to use your brain. That's why classical music doesn't work when you throw it at people in a subway platform while they're rushing to work. Classical music is something that needs to be contemplated, you have to be completely present with an active mind that's working. It's not background music.

My mother was an opera singer and my grandmother a concert pianist, and they only liked classical music. If I put on a pop record, they would tell me to turn it off, so I only listen to classical.

I got a classical piano training when I was little, and we also had music study lessons where we'd have to listen to a lot of classical music.

I can think and play stuff in classical music that possibly violinists who didn't have access to other types of music could never do. It means I'm more flexible within classical music, to be a servant to the composer.

Anyone who knows classical music and loves classical music has heard the Beethoven Seventh hundreds of times probably in their life.

There is no essential difference between classical and popular music. Music is music. I want to communicate with the listener who finds Indian classical music remote.

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.

Ilaignan,' the script of which has been penned by Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, is a period film that is set in the romantic era of classical music. You will find Western classical music mixed with our Indian melodies.

There are three virtuous styles of music; classical, jazz and heavy metal. I do love classical music but I don't listen to it much anymore and I never listen to metal, so I am not very interested in music that is difficult to play.

Some people dig jazz, some people dig classical music, some people dig rock. Everyone is so concerned about who they like. They always say, 'This guy is the best,' 'No, this guy is the best.' But I think everyone is great. I really don't have barriers to any type of music. I could listen to everything from metal to classical music to anything else.

We have to go and show these people what classical music is. We say sometimes that classical music has a small audience, but it's because people don't have the chance to be closer to it.

In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form.

Oh, stuff the critics. I don't care. Too many people are snooty about classical. Look, I wasn't brought up in a home where we listened to classical music. It was a singing teacher that thought it would be best for my voice. Then I moved into crossover. And if that makes the music accessible to more people, then great.

A lot of my colleagues just don't really realize that they have to work in order to get the interest of an audience, especially with young kids, especially because it [classical music] is not that popular. You don't see it on TV, you don't hear it on radio, so you really gotta put an effort into promoting classical music.

Being from a classical environment, I've always been provoked by classical musicians thinking that classical music is so much greater art than pop. I've always been annoyed by that.

My musical roots and inspiration lie not in rock n' roll or metal music, but first and foremost in classical music, balalaika, and in underground house 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.

I used to do Korean classical music and started training to join an idol group after someone set me up an interview with my current agency. The common thing between Korean classical music and becoming a singer is that I get to go on stage which why I decided to get professional training for K-pop music without holding any bias.

Right now I'm listening to a lot of different things but I listen to a lot of classical music. Eventually I would like to compose and perform classical.

Being a musician, you want to be able to do the hardest stuff there is. People would think it's classical, but in classical, it's all on the page and the difficulty is keeping up with the music.

My parents met in music school, and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing.

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.

I think music gives so much inspiration. I listen to all kinds of music: pop, hip-hop, everything. I also love classical music.

When I listen to music today, it is about 99 percent classical. I rarely even listen to folk music, the music of my own specialty, because folk music is to me more limited than classical music.

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.

My father was able to play a number of musical instruments and I fell in love with classical music in my teens and I allowed it to influence me. I like to think I took and still do from classical music and various techniques, I have made classical albums and recorded seven different pieces of Bach on different albums and its all music too me.

I think classical dance is not seeing the evolution seen by classical music.

I come from a very strenuous, strict, disciplined classical music background. My grandfather, noted Carnatic classical exponent Dr. Sripada Pinakapani, was a Padma Bhushan recipient.

It is the responsibility of music composers to add some classical music elements into their songs to make the music genre popular.

We do a lot of light classical programming with that, too... obviously... a lot of Tchaikovsky music, Grieg, things like that which have become less classical with classical concerts.

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.

I went to school to learn guitar, solfeggio, and harmony. I wanted to know more about music, how it works. I wanted to take voice lessons, too, and that's when I discovered what I could do with my voice. At the beginning, I thought I would do classical and pop, but then I learned that I really liked the classical music.

If you ever ask me what my all-time dream character is, my answer will be Mia Tansen, the great composer-musician in Hindustani classical music. And ideally, the film should be directed by a person like Bhansali who is a great director and has a marvellous sense of classical music.

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.

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.

I do not think classical music faces any threat because new music is being made through computer, as the real charm of classical is its purity, and one who is seeking purity will surely find classical music in spite of so many alternatives.

I wanted to make an album where every song is kind of interacting - where you can't tell what's the string arrangement and what's the song. I guess that came out of going to college, majoring in music, studying classical music, and even as a kid, being really drawn to classical music.

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.

Classical music and pop are two different universes, each with its own difficulties, peculiarities, depth and artistic dignity. In Italy, I think there is a fairly clear line of demarcation, but the history of music is full of fusion. Popular and classical music have always found points of contact, of crossing, exchange, both drawing mutual profit.

I love contrast in music. Being inspired by classical, actually - in high school especially - classical and metal both, I remember having this cool realization that they are really similar. It's just different instrumentation.