Top Musical Quotes Collection

Discover a curated collection of Musical quotes. Find inspiration, motivation, and wisdom from the best quotes in this category.

Image of Ismail Kadaré
Shiny musical instruments wailed, their mouths open like lilies.
- Ismail Kadaré
Collection: Musical
Image of Benjamin Britten
I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music.
- Benjamin Britten
Collection: Musical
Image of Thomas Beecham
We cannot expect you to be with us all the time, but perhaps you could be good enough to keep in touch now and again.
- Thomas Beecham
Collection: Musical
Image of Thomas Beecham
Her singing reminds me of a cart coming downhill with the brake on.
- Thomas Beecham
Collection: Musical
Image of Ben Nicholson
The kind of painting which I find exciting is not necessarily representational or non-representational, but it is musical and architectural... Whether this visual relationship is slightly more or slightly less abstract is, for me, beside the point.
- Ben Nicholson
Collection: Musical
Image of Smokey Robinson
I don't ever balk at being considered a Motown person, because Motown is the greatest musical event that ever happened in the history of music
- Smokey Robinson
Collection: Musical
Image of Martin Short
A musical is only as good as its director. The same can also be said for the CIA.
- Martin Short
Collection: Musical
Image of Michael Tilson Thomas
It's easier to interest a conservative audience in pushing the musical boundaries than to involve a young audience used to very noisy, assertive music in something like Schubert or Bach because the further back you go, the less bells and whistles there are.
- Michael Tilson Thomas
Collection: Musical
Image of Ernest Newman
For my part, if I had the power I would insist on all oratorios being sung in the costume of the period - with a possible exception in the case of the Creation.
- Ernest Newman
Collection: Musical
Image of Dwight Yoakam
Quality is timeless: It will clearly define itself. And so I make reference to and acknowledge things that I feel have been dismissed, trying to restate those musical and cultural elements clearly and vehemently
- Dwight Yoakam
Collection: Musical
Image of Laura Riding
Shakespeare alternated between musical surrenders to social prestige and magnificent fits of poetic remorse.
- Laura Riding
Collection: Musical
Image of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Mozart is the musical Christ.
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Collection: Musical
Image of Jeremy Sisto
What appealed to me about the whole production is how big it is. I don't do musicals because I don't sing very well. But this is the biggest stage thing I'll do that's not a musical.
- Jeremy Sisto
Collection: Musical
Image of Robert Mayer
I look upon myself as a musical bricklayer with architectural aspirations.
- Robert Mayer
Collection: Musical
Image of Eli Siegel
There is not one thing that music does which does not say something about how a person should organize himself, too.
- Eli Siegel
Collection: Musical
Image of Svetlana Alliluyeva
A sense of religion is something one is born with, like a musical ear. One can develop it, cultivate it, enrich it, but if one hasn't got its seed to begin with, no powers of the intellect, no sophistication of 'evidence' can awaken it.
- Svetlana Alliluyeva
Collection: Musical
Image of Bix Beiderbecke
Jazz is musical humor. The noun jazz describes a modern American technique for the playing of any music, accompanied by noise called harmony, and interpolated instrumental effects. It also describes music exhibiting influence of that technique which has as its traditional object to secure the effects of surprise, or in the broadest sense, humor.
- Bix Beiderbecke
Collection: Musical
Image of Ralph Vaughan Williams
A supreme composer can only come out of a musical nation.
- Ralph Vaughan Williams
Collection: Musical
Image of Elaine Paige
"Evita" obviously would always be very special to me because it was the first major musical that I did on stage and created in the U.K. with Hal Prince directing.
- Elaine Paige
Collection: Musical
Image of Liberace
You know the bank I used to cry all the way to. I bought it.
- Liberace
Collection: Musical
Image of Larry Gelbart
If Hitler’s still alive, I hope he’s out of town with a musical.
- Larry Gelbart
Collection: Musical
Image of Elvin Jones
The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer.
- Elvin Jones
Collection: Musical
Image of Iannis Xenakis
The musical scale is a convention which circumscribes the area of potentiality and permits construction within those limits in its own particular symmetry.
- Iannis Xenakis
Collection: Musical
Image of Glenn Gould
Mozart died too late rather than too soon.
- Glenn Gould
Collection: Musical
Image of George C. Wolfe
It's very important for an audience to know where they are and why they are there in a musical. It allows them to relax and follow this form that operates in shorthand. So the economy of the form, in many respects, is why a lot of screenwriting is so sleek. Because the visuals are where the explosions happen.
- George C. Wolfe
Collection: Musical
Image of Sergei Prokofiev
My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.
- Sergei Prokofiev
Collection: Musical
Image of Johnny Borrell
You'd find out more truth by just walking down the street with a musical instrument than by looking at any of the news outlets.
- Johnny Borrell
Collection: Musical
Image of Oscar Peterson
Louie Bellson represents the epitome of musical talent. His ability to cover the whole musical spectrum from an elite percussionist to a very gifted composer and arranger never ceases to amaze me. I consider him one of the musical giants of our age.
- Oscar Peterson
Collection: Musical
Image of Jimmy Cliff
I've done a lot of things to become what I've become, out to create and establish a musical form and I call it movie.
- Jimmy Cliff
Collection: Musical
Image of John Carpenter
Movies are pieces of film stuck together in a certain rhythm, an absolute beat, like a musical composition. The rhythm you create affects the audience.
- John Carpenter
Collection: Musical
Image of Alexandre Desplat
There are so many parts of music that it's actually a pleasure for me to work with an orchestra, or a jazz band, or a choir, and use every element that the musical tool box can offer. The world of music I love so much, and I can change the costume depending on the part, and I'm actually in the film.
- Alexandre Desplat
Collection: Musical
Image of Pauline Oliveros
Deep Listening is listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, or one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep Listening represents a heightened state of awareness and connects to all that there is. As a composer I make my music through Deep Listening
- Pauline Oliveros
Collection: Musical
Image of Rob Brown
I know that there's a lot of room to maneuver in those kind of ghostly musical spheres.
- Rob Brown
Collection: Musical
Image of Anne Stevenson
I work very hard on all my poems, but most of the work consists of trying not to sound as if I had worked. I try to make them sound as natural as possible, but within a quite strict form, which to my ears has a lot to do with musical rhythm and sound.
- Anne Stevenson
Collection: Musical
Image of A. O. Scott
The musical performances do more than enrich the movie; they complete it.
- A. O. Scott
Collection: Musical
Image of Hans Frank
I did not care for Wagner. My tastes are more classical. Der Fuhrer had no musical taste and liked Wagner because of the bombastic Teutonic glories.
- Hans Frank
Collection: Musical
Image of Sho Baraka
I wanted to create an album that spoke all the musical languages I loved.
- Sho Baraka
Collection: Musical
Image of Richard Rodney Bennett
Being on a musical quest was something I always enjoyed.
- Richard Rodney Bennett
Collection: Musical
Image of James Sellars
I would like to hear Elliot Carter's Fourth String Quartet, if only to discover what a cranky prostate does to one's polyphony.
- James Sellars
Collection: Musical
Image of Paul Epworth
Every musical scene has a cycle.
- Paul Epworth
Collection: Musical
Image of David Lindsay-Abaire
I dont want to work on a musical if Im not the lyricist.
- David Lindsay-Abaire
Collection: Musical
Image of Claudio Monteverdi
Text first, rhythm second, melody third.
- Claudio Monteverdi
Collection: Musical
Image of Steve Goodman
Bought the Vegematic and Pocket Fisherman, too, illuminated illustrated history of Life, and Boxcar Willie.
- Steve Goodman
Collection: Musical
Image of Ennio Morricone
We live in a modern world, and in contemporary music the central fact is contamination. Not the contamination of disease but the contamination of musical styles. If you find this in me, that is good.
- Ennio Morricone
Collection: Musical
Image of Hal Price
It costs a great deal of money to do a musical, and the more money involved, the more big business influences the artform.
- Hal Price
Collection: Musical
Image of Pierre Boulez
Why compose works that have to be re-created every time they are performed? Because definitive, once-and-for-all developments seem no longer appropriate to musical thought as it is today, or to the actual state that we have reached in the evolution of musical technique, which is increasingly concerned with the investigation of a relative world, a permanent 'discovering' rather like the state of 'permanent revolution'.
- Pierre Boulez
Collection: Musical
Image of Kid Koala
When I'm playing with the band or playing with some projects or some of my own stuff it's about the musical approach. That would be the more turntablist approach to things of where it's strictly about music.
- Kid Koala
Collection: Musical
Image of Kid Koala
Eventually we want to do a puppet musical with turntables in the orchestra pit.
- Kid Koala
Collection: Musical
Image of Charles Schlueter
It's the process, not the result.
- Charles Schlueter
Collection: Musical