A Quote by Philip Kitcher
I didn't know that Mahler would come to play so large a role, nor that music and literature and philosophy can interinanimate one another in the way I've come to think they do in this case.
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It is possible to enjoy the Mozart concerto without being able to play the clarinet. In fact, you can learn to be an expert connoisseur of music without being able to play a note on any instrument. Of course, music would come to a halt if nobody ever learned to play it. But if everybody grew up thinking that music was synonymous with playing it, think how relatively impoverished many lives would be. Couldn't we learn to think of science in the same way?
I think typically you'd start in a supporting role or an ensemble role, or maybe even an off-Broadway role. So to come into a lead role on Broadway, especially taking over a role that has been played by two phenomenal actors in the past, that is some large shoes to fill.
A dream role is a role that you can't even picture for yourself. Everything I've ever played I never pictured I would get a chance to play. It [has] gone beyond my wildest dreams. One thing I would love to do in my lifetime is a movie musical. I've wanted to do that since I was a kid. That's what made me interested in acting in the first place. I would do any type of musical, but I love the Harlem Renaissance era. I think a dream role in something that I probably can't see and I don't know when it's going to come.
I have always adored Mahler, and Mahler was a major influence on the music of the Beatles. John and me used to sit and do the Kindertotenlieder and Wunderhorn for hours, we'd take turns singing and playing the piano. We thought Mahler was gear.
Who is my role model and how long can I keep this going? I just move around and do different things and come back to music, try making films and come back to music, write children's books and come back to music.
There are areas of philosophy that are important, but I think of them as being subsumed by other fields. In the case of descriptive philosophy, you have literature or logic, which, in my view, is really mathematics.
I mean that you always know what results will come from one or another of your actions; but in a strange way you want to do one thing and get the result that could only come from another
Although, I am proud of all my Symphonies as they all have something special to say, my particular favourite is the Fifth. As the great Mahler expert Donald Mitchell said that if Mahler had written another Symphony, it would have been my Fifth!
I'd like to play a guy who doesn't think so much. I'd like a character whose words come out before he thinks about it. I want a character who is just kind of dumb in that way. A guy who doesn't have too many dangerous, devious ideas. It would be fun to play a role like that.
I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels.
He wanted us to play whatever we played in the most characteristic and appropriate style. Even it was the theme from 'The Godfather,' you needed to play that then the way that a Hollywood producer would expect it to be played. Whether it was that or the posthorn solo from Mahler's Symphony No. 3, he would expect that to be played in the way that Leonard Bernstein wanted to hear it. In retrospect, I think it was a sensational way to teach this particular group of students. By the time you graduated you could absolutely read anything with any trumpet.
I am convinced that you should always play the way you want to play and success will then come on its own - as long as it's a good philosophy.
Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession; as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life.
I think the most important thing that I can offer young musicians is once you get up on the bandstand, understanding that you're now asking this prayer to come through you. When you think about music it's got to be that way. Just the thrill of being able to play another note, not to win anything or get a trophy.
I know that, physically, I'm a very demure-looking person. But I certainly have as much aggression or anger as the next person, and that's got to come out somehow. I'm lucky that I get to play music, and that it's not going to come out in some totally destructive way.
I cannot work and listen to Wagner at the same time, nor Mahler, nor Beethoven's late quartets. I enjoy listening to Chopin's piano music when I work.
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