Orchestra Quotes

1. "I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way."
Author: Alan Hovhaness

2. "I was sure the old man knew nothing about the beatitudes, ecstasies, dazzling reverberations of sexual encounters. Cut out the poetry was his message. Clinical sex, deprived of all the warmth of love—the orchestration of all the senses, touch, hearing, sight, palate; all the euphoric accompaniments, back-ground music, moods, atmosphere, variations—forced him to resort to literary aphrodisiacs."
Author: Anaïs Nin

3. "Each person carries within their core the birthright of creative freedom, which, when organized and orchestrated, is the most awesome force on earth."
Author: Bryant McGill

4. "I recorded the song live in front of an orchestra, and yes, I was very moved, I was in tears."
Author: Burt Bacharach

5. "To me, the piano in itself is an orchestra."
Author: Cecil Taylor

6. "The sound of the orchestra is one of the most magnificent musical sounds that has ever existed."
Author: Chick Corea

7. "I used to play works in progress to people, but now I wait 'til it's finished, because you make excuses all the time: 'Well, there's gonna be an orchestra on it.' Rather than make excuses, wait 'til it's finished, and then they can say they don't like it."
Author: Chris Lowe

8. "I do not attempt to orchestrate my career. I let God do that."
Author: Clint Howard

9. "In symphonic music, when you are conducting, you do the same thing. You are feeling the whole orchestra, thinking ahead so you can prepare for a change."
Author: David Amram

10. "Chemistry is not anything an executive producer or writer can orchestrate or plan; you just hope for it."
Author: David E. Kelley

11. "Something is conscious of us. It listens as it plays upon theinstruments that we are. It takes delight in the cacophony, anorchestration so grand it is far beyond our contemplation. It ismasterful, elegant, swift, and awesome. It is the Song of theUniverse—and more. It is our Composer, and one who lovesbeyond conditions, beyond the beyond. If the law of ‘as above, sobelow' holds true, then we too are composers. We too sing songsthat breathe shape into reality. But are we listening? Are wepaying attention to the compositions we create?"
Author: Dielle Ciesco

12. "I played cello in my high school orchestra."
Author: Eberhard Weber

13. "His style has the desperate jauntiness of an orchestra fiddling away for dear life on a sinking ship."
Author: Edmund Wilson

14. "The waters of the stream played the part of the orchestra, and the sunlight provided the dancers. Every now and then a crescendo of wind highlighted the symphony in the clearing by the creek."
Author: Edward Mooney Jr.

15. "Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra - not choreography to the audience."
Author: George Szell

16. "The music for 'The Departed' could have been played by an orchestra, but you make a decision about orchestration based on the context of the film. You want the music to broaden the scope of a film, not just repeat what you're seeing."
Author: Howard Shore

17. "You can find the whole world of a film in one instrument, or you can find a world of sound in the orchestra."
Author: Howard Shore

18. "When you play a concerto with a small orchestra, you don't feel it is as important as Carnegie Hall. You try to work out all the little problems. Once that's all done, trust comes in."
Author: Itzhak Perlman

19. "I don't feel that the conductor has real power. The orchestra has the power, and every member of it knows instantaneously if you're just beating time."
Author: Itzhak Perlman

20. "I think this orchestra's strengths involve drama and voice."
Author: James Levine

21. "Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration."
Author: Johannes Brahms

22. "Pardon me for loitering in front of an orchestra."
Author: John Goodman

23. "It really does look like musical sheets, frayed at the edges, constantly played, coming to you in tidal scores, in bars of canals with innumerable obbligati of bridges, mullioned windows, or curved crownings of Coducci cathedrals, not to mention the violin necks of gondolas. In fact, the whole city, especially at night, resembles a gigantic orchestra, with dimly lit music stands of palazzi, with a restless chorus of waves, with the falsetto of a star in the winter sky."
Author: Joseph Brodsky

24. "We each have a story. They did this to us. There was no outside aggressor. They wanted an Apocalypse. They wanted the end. And they made it happen. It was orchestrated - who got in, who didn't. There was a master list. We weren't on it. We were left here to die. They want to erase us, the past, but we can't let them."
Author: Julianna Baggott

25. "We are musical notes emanating from the quantum string section of a grand symphonic orchestra."
Author: Kane Freeman

26. "It was both exciting and frustrating to work with an orchestral group."
Author: Ken Hensley

27. "Rules. Even as the world of phone and computer sex (and dominance) were full of their own rules, so was the new world of doing-it-for real. And some of these new rules, (OK, most of them, Robin admitted) were just as silly as the ones she had learned and followed before. Safe words, for example. Magic words that when said by the bottom, stopped a scene so that some kind of inconvenient or dangerous activity could be halted. Robin had nothing against the concept.........Having a code to use so that you're free to pull against the bondage or whimper "no, no, no" seemed to be a great idea. But having all these possible ways to orchestrate what was happening seemed, well, contrary to the point........I want to feel that I can't stop it. I want to be really mastered, taken over by someone who isn't goin to stop doing things because I'm not getting off on it. Someone who knows enough not to endanger me, unless that was what was intended........."
Author: Laura Antoniou

28. "One time I introduced my orchestra as the Shampoo Music Makers instead of the Champagne Music Makers."
Author: Lawrence Welk

29. "Composer" is a word which here means "a person who sits in a room, muttering and humming and figuring out what notes the orchestra is going to play." This is called composing. But last night, the Composer was not muttering. He was not humming. He was not moving, or even breathing. This is called decomposing."
Author: Lemony Snicket

30. "I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry."
Author: Leon Theremin

31. "There's not an orchestra in the world that doesn't have weaknesses. None of us can play everything well. The repertoire is just too big."
Author: Leonard Slatkin

32. "When I want 30 musicians in the orchestra, I get 30."
Author: Les Baxter

33. "Letters orchestrated into a song of words create the symphony of a novel."
Author: Leslie Austin

34. "Ten years ago I saw a documentary on the siege of that Moscow theater. After just forty-eight hours of the terrorists confining the hostages to their seats with no sleep, the lights blazing and being forced to pee their pants-although if the had to shit, they could do so in the orchestra pit-well,more than a few hostages just stood up and walked to the exit knowing they'd get shot in the back. Because the were DONE."
Author: Maria Semple

35. "Intellectual 'work' is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer, is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the magician with the fiddle-bow in his hand, who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him - why, certainly he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it's a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair - but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash also."
Author: Mark Twain

36. "But still as compared to many, many orchestras in the world, I think you find a lot more new music and living composers on our programs than many other places."
Author: Michael Tilson Thomas

37. "They are representations of many shared hours of collaboration between us all. That's the real nature of the relationship the orchestra and I are trying to build."
Author: Michael Tilson Thomas

38. "The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure."
Author: Nicholas Meyer

39. "I do like alternative rock and rap, but as far as inspirational, then I go full-on orchestra. It fills up your entire being."
Author: Osric Chau

40. "He was like some prophet of old, scourging the sins of the people. He leaped about in a frenzy of inspiration till I feared he would do himself an injury. Sometimes he expressed himself in a somewhat odd manner, but every word carried conviction. He showed me New York in its true colours. He showed me the vanity and wickedness of sitting in gilded haunts of vice, eating lobster when decent people should be in bed.'He said that the tango and the fox-trot were devices of the devil to drag people down into the Bottomless Pit. He said that there was more sin in ten minutes with a negro banjo orchestra than in all the ancient revels of Nineveh and Babylon. And when he stood on one leg and pointed right at where I was sitting and shouted "This means you!" I could have sunk through the floor."
Author: P.G. Wodehouse

41. "And so, given the musical sensibilities Hatcher treasured in his earthly life, it is hard to exaggerate the severity of his torture at standing naked in his tiny kitchen in Hell as former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sings a Bee Gees disco song backed by a full studio orchestra and Robin and Maurice."
Author: Robert Olen Butler

42. "The gods have meant that I should dance, and by the gods, I will dance!!! For in some mystic hour I shall move to the unheard rhythms of the cosmic orchestra of heaven, and you will know the language of my wordless poems, and will come to me... for that is why I dance.""Los dioses me destinaron a bailar, ¡y por los dioses bailaré! Pues en alguna hora mística me moveré a los ritmos ináuditos de la orquesta cósmica del cielo, y conocerás el lenguaje de mis poemas sin palabras, y vendrás a mí... pues por éso es que bailo."
Author: Ruth St. Denis

43. "Music blows lyrics up very quickly, and suddenly they become more than art. They become pompous and they become self-conscious ... I firmly believe that lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you not only have the music, but you've got costume, story, acting, orchestra. There's a lot to take in."
Author: Stephen Sondheim

44. "Don't be disheartened by the forces of evil. Nothing can happen that God hasn't allowed. Even resistance is all part of grand orchestration. The devil always has you right were God wants you."
Author: Steve Maraboli

45. "One morning in the middle of a big orchestral session, a well-dressed woman with a frown on her face said, ‘It sounds kind of slow to me. Can't you take it up an octave or something?"
Author: Susan Hamilton

46. "When you hear a large symphony orchestra. for instance, in a concert hall, there's a big, sweeping sound that just doesn't get on to a record."
Author: Teddy Wilson

47. "There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between."
Author: Thomas Beecham

48. "And your dinner for the orchestra officials.""Haven't you ever had people coming over and no time to shop? You have to make do with what's in the fridge, Clarice. May I call you Clarice?"
Author: Thomas Harris

49. "I used to go with him and I'd sometimes play, take over from him. That was my first taste of the music business, I suppose, but I was also in the youth orchestra at Johnston Grammar."
Author: Trevor Horn

50. "Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra—they'll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is covered in open novels. I read lines to swim in a certain sensibility, to strike a particular note, to encourage rigour when I'm too sentimental, to bring verbal ease when I'm syntactically uptight. I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka, as roughage. If your aesthetic has become so refined it is stopping you from placing a single black mark on white paper, stop worrying so much about what Nabokov would say; pick up Dostoyevsky, patron saint of substance over style."
Author: Zadie Smith

Orchestra Quotes Pictures