Top 1200 Classical Musicians Quotes & Sayings

Classical musicians do this all the time. They want perfection. So they piece things together. Eight bars of this and six bars of that. Glenn Gould said that with a recording he wanted to make perfect versions of pieces.

If income was directly proportional to technical proficiency and education, classical and jazz musicians would be some of the most affluent people in the world.

Way back in the old days, say in Europe of the Middle Ages, you had an aristocracy, and they could afford to pay for musicians. The kings and queens had musicians in the castles, and that developed into symphony orchestras and what we call "Classical music" now.

We need to take music out of the ivory tower - both for musicians and for the public. Otherwise, classical music will not survive the 21st century.

I found that jazz musicians, possibly more than their classical counterparts, wear long-standing friendships easily and gracefully.

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

Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky were not classical musicians while they were alive and active, they were the rock stars of their day.

After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz.

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 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.

I don't get so much inspiration from other musicians. Especially alive musicians. Late musicians are good - Bach, Beethoven - yes, good.

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.

When I do operas, I'm not really singing very classically. I have a classical background as far as being a pianist and an oboist, but my voice isn't really classical in the operatic sense. But I certainly have a classical sensibility, so I'm comfortable being in that world.

My whole life is classical now. Except my wife. I don't have a classical wife. I have a classy wife, but I don't have a classical wife.

My parents are both musicians and made sure we all played music. My brothers and sisters all play instruments, so we'll get together whenever we can and play. We play a lot of classical music - you know, the good stuff.

Part of what I enjoy about writing classical music is communicating through the score and collaborating with such amazing musicians.

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.

I was afraid the other musicians might want to present themselves too much, though I see in the coverage I've received of the album that the musicians got wonderful reviews for their contributions and abilities. I think the four musicians played freely within my limits.

I have not labelled 'Krishna' as a classical presentation. Nor do I bring in non-classical elements into the traditional repertoire.

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

In subjects that physicists think of as purely quantum, classical ideas and classical computational techniques can often be powerful.

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

Being a classical musician I'm fascinated with how my colleagues, not just singers, but every musician finds ways to express something else or something new or the same ol', same ol' in classical music. I'm always in dialogue with other musicians at least orally, if I can't be with them and a lot of dead musicians as well. I've learned a lot from dead people on recordings.

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.

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 father was the proprietor of a music shop on Forty-third Street, where many of the finest performers and musicians of the day would come to shop. He knew the classical repertoire inside out.

For me, let's keep jazz as folk music. Let's not make jazz classical music. Let's keep it as street music, as people's everyday-life music. Let's see jazz musicians continue to use the materials, the tools, the spirit of the actual time that they're living in, as what they build their lives as musicians around.

There are a lot of classical musicians in my family, so I grew up with that being kind of normal.

I wasn't a jazz player, but a classical musician, and I improvised arrangements of popular songs using classical motifs.

I hail from a family of musicians for the last 18 generations. My grandfather was a classical singer; his father was a sitar player.

I love classical music. I love a lot of musicians playing together and the whole culture of that, whether it's Indian or it's Western.

All of us in the field must remain constantly vigilant and fight against all types of inappropriate and hurtful behavior and continue the essential work of creating a fair and safe work environment for all classical musicians.

Kolkata is a musical city. What I like about people here is the lack of diplomacy. Some of the best Indian classical musicians belong to this place. Kolkatans do not go by fashion, but by passion.

I basically love classical music. I love a lot of musicians playing together and the whole culture of that, whether it's Indian or it's Western.

In fact although I have studied in a Conservatory the classical piano, I do not consider myself a classical pianist.

Musicians are affected by the audience just as much as audiences are affected by the musicians. The only problem is that often times musicians won't allow themselves to admit to that fact.

It would have been more obvious to go into film, based on the generation before me, but the generation before them were all composers or classical musicians.

It was about finding creative, original musicians. Musicians who are strong composers. Flexible, empathetic musicians, who are great individually but who also have a great sense for cooperation and collaboration, great listeners as well as great players.

I am compared to other classical musicians, but most of them perform songs from other people, and most of those composers belong to another era.

Right out of school, I did this show called 'Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.' It is based on a classical text with new music - not necessarily confined by a certain genre. It was a diverse, interesting group of musicians, actors, nonactors, and singers all creating this thing that is bigger than all of us.

Western classical music and classical dance gel beautifully.

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

Personally, I think young musicians need to learn to play more than one style. Jazz can only enhance the classical side, and classical can only enhance the jazz. I started out playing classical, because you have to have that as a foundation.

My brother had a house in Paris. To it came many Western classical musicians. These musicians all made the same point: 'Indian music,' they said, 'is beautiful when we hear it with the dancers. On its own, it is repetitious and monotonous.'

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.

There are so many wonderful, wonderful musicians in the world, I cannot possibly make a distinction between the fact that they might play classical music, or bluegrass, or Irish traditional, or Indian music.

I'm a great believer that actors are very similar to session musicians. You wouldn't ask a session musician, 'How do you play jazz,' and then, 'How do you play classical?' They just do it, because if they don't do it, they don't eat.

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.

The availability of downloads is fantastic, but you don't know which musicians are playing on the songs anymore. It's kind of making musicians faceless, you don't get musical solos on records anymore. You know who the singer is but it's the poor old musicians who suffer.

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.

When working with classical musicians, it is important to be clear as possible in the score about what my intentions are. Because there isn't a lot of rehearsal time, especially at the ballet, it's best if everything is written in the score.

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.

I took classical piano for a couple of years, but I sort of lost interest - I couldn't read a note today if I tried. I still enjoy that stuff, and I think I naturally gravitate towards the classical licks; in fact, I know that I do. I gravitate towards the classical licks that I heard by famous old composers.

Musicians like to converse. There's always interesting conversation with musicians - with classical musicians, with jazz musicians, musicians in general.

Classical - perhaps I should say 'orchestral' - music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitchwise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It's all in little boxes. The reason you get child prodigies in chess, arithmetic, and classical composition is that they are all worlds of discontinuous, parceled-up possibilities.

The type of music we know as classical music began with rich people hiring musicians or owning them in a way. Without funding, it's very hard to have this experience. Be it state money or private money, there has to be someone dedicated to raising the money.

Many classical musicians lack pulse and rhythmical strength and precision, so for us it was very important to acquire and learn those.

Some musicians play blues, others classical jazz or bluegrass. I like to play political roles because I can merge my political interests with my creative interests.