Musical famous quotes
04-15-2025
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I grew up in musical theatre and love to perform on stage.
-- A. J. McLean -
The musical performances do more than enrich the movie; they complete it.
-- A. O. Scott -
Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
-- Aaron Copland -
The extras are a nice bonus feature, but the main incentive is the musical experience.
-- Aaron Neville -
The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine… Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.
-- Ada Lovelace -
Music is more of a hobby to me than my hobbies, if that makes sense. I love music; my dad and brother were very musical, and music just happens to be one of my hobbies that became my vocation.
-- Al Jardine -
Buy our album, were Nirvana, a garage band from Seattle. Well, it sure beats raising cattle.
-- Al Yankovic -
The window doesn't open, the fan is broke, and my face is turning blue. I haven't been in a crowd like this since I went to see the Who.
-- Al Yankovic -
We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.
-- Alan Watts -
People's musical tastes are fickle, and music can be a fashion.
-- Alex Kapranos -
Glasgow's not a media center. When you're there, when you're hanging about, you feel quite detached from musical movements or fashions or anything like that. You do feel quite alone, in a good way.
-- Alex Kapranos -
I always work with the same composer, his name is Ali Helnwein. I don't have a musical background.
-- Alex Prager -
My musical development stopped when Frank Sinatra died.
-- Alex Trebek -
As a composer seeking to remain anonymous I am shy of confessing my musical activity. This is intelligible enough. For others it is their chief business, the occupation and aim of life. For me it is a relaxation, a pastime which distracts me from my principal business, my professorship. I love my profession and my science. I love the Academy and my pupils, male and female, because to direct the work of young people, one must be close to them.
-- Alexander Borodin -
Since the age of 12, all my musical thinking has been influenced by Afro-American music.
-- Alexis Korner -
Every musical movement that is big enough has to produce some good musicians who wouldn't have had the incentive to start playing without it.
-- Alexis Korner -
I've been reading scripts where they've been doing a lot of singing now, but within the dark, realistic story line. I would love, love, love, love to do that. But not a musical on Broadway, I don't have that kind of energy or stamina.
-- Alia Shawkat -
When it's open and honest, that's when the real nature of who you are as a vocalist or as a performer, all of that stuff can finally start to become what it's supposed to be. Like a settling into yourself. It's not even a musical thing, it's a whole mindset, a whole acceptance of who you were supposed to be. Life sounds good
-- Alison Krauss -
I started out really into musical theater. So you can imagine I was super popular. I wasn't awkward looking at all.
-- Allison Williams -
There is a kinship between music and painting - with the same words used to describe both, as when a musical composition is said to have color and a painting to have rhythm.
-- Alton Tobey -
I enjoyed acting growing up; I did musical theater. I had a secret desire to be a television and movie actress, but it wasn't something I admitted to myself that I wanted to do, I guess.
-- Amanda Schull -
Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
I just wanted to see every single musical I could. The very first one I saw was 'Beauty and the Beast,' the only one I could get tickets for, and then 'Les Miserables' and then 'Chicago.
-- America Ferrera -
Poetry is music, and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis.
-- Amiri Baraka -
There are large numbers of people in India below the poverty line, there are large numbers of people who lead a meager existence. They want to find a little escape from the hardships of life, and come and watch something colorful and exciting and musical. Indian cinema provides that. So yes, the content of our television and our cinema is escapist in nature because we are there to provide entertainment.
-- Amitabh Bachchan -
The closest place that I feel like I come to having religious moments is always musical.
-- Amos Lee -
I was the dork in high school who sang musical numbers up and down the hallways.
-- Amy Adams -
I come from musical theater, and a lot of musical theater is about accepting fantasy. I think it is more about just being open and accepting.
-- Amy Adams -
The most consistent musical experience I had growing up was church music.
-- Amy Grant -
I wanted to be a veterinarian until I saw a video of a vet performing surgery on a dog. Then I decided I wanted to be a pianist.
-- Amy Lee -
Throughout her career, Ana Barbara has cultivated endless hits; each of her albums was a true musical surprise... this is why today she is honored with the title of Queen of Grupero.
-- Ana Barbara -
What is beautiful enchants me. I mean not just physical beauty but a wider concept of beauty. There is beauty in poetry and in great musical or singing performances. There is beauty everywhere if you can just see it.
-- Andrea Bocelli -
I have no musical talent at all. I was banned from music classes and told I would never be able to understand anything. I still don't think I can sing, but somehow I get away with it.
-- Andrew Eldritch -
This is a musical, ma'am. If there's no gay, there's a problem.
-- Andrew Rannells -
As an actor, you generally don't get to choose what projects you are part of, so I've been very fortunate that 'The Book of Mormon' was something I got to be part of. I don't want to be lofty, but it was groundbreaking, in many ways, for musical theater, so that was really thrilling to be part of.
-- Andrew Rannells -
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 -
My father was a classical singer of baroque music, and my older sister was in musical theatre, and I thought about doing the same thing but then realised straight acting was for me.
-- Antonia Thomas -
I have a fantastic studio in my home, and it's my biggest toy. I have about a half a million dollars worth of musical equipment in my house.
-- Antonio Banderas -
I love music, singing, and playing piano (though I'm not very good). And I adore musical theater.
-- Aprilynne Pike -
And when I met Cecil Taylor it was a complete transformation of musical identities. All the tenets that I had grown up with were thrown out the window.
-- Archie Shepp -
Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened.
-- Archie Shepp -
I considered the years in Hollywood nothing but an interim. What I always wanted was to be was a musical comedy star.
-- Arlene Dahl -
What I do I am driven to do. I follow the dictates of a looming and unseen force. I try to become like a musical instrument, intruding no sound of its own but bringing forth such tones as are played upon it by a master's hand.
-- Arnold Friberg -
God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way.
-- Arturo Toscanini -
After I die, I shall return to earth as a gatekeeper of a bordello and I won't let any of you enter.
-- Arturo Toscanini -
I love to sing! To be in a movie with musical number is the coolest thing ever!
-- Ashley Tisdale -
Jazz vision is a wordless conversation between musical notes and visual expressions.
-- Barbara Januszkiewicz -
Jazz vision for me is seeing my art in musical term. It offers me an visual expressions in an ever-changing musical palette.
-- Barbara Januszkiewicz -
I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary.
-- Barbara Kruger -
I get a different kind of lyric from someone else that might make me go in a different musical direction.
-- Barry Mann -
I really believe musical form will go on. There's got to be a way of making musical form in cinema live again.
-- Baz Luhrmann -
My dad was a fairy," said Zach. "And by that I don't mean he dressed well and enjoyed musical theatre.
-- Ben Aaronovitch -
Hall & Oates is one of the few musical groups as satisfying now as it was back then. There's something incredibly musically satisfying about their songs. Nothing has diminished my love for them.
-- Ben Gibbard -
The Blind Boys are truly the deepest well of American musical heritage you can discover.
-- Ben Harper -
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 -
Schoenberg is too melodious for me, too sweet.
-- Bertolt Brecht -
Broadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer.
-- Betty Buckley -
My name ain't Keith, so could you lease stop Sweatin' me.
-- Big Daddy Kane -
I like to work with artists who are as wide in their musical taste as I am.
-- Big Jim Sullivan -
I blow my own mind like Nirvana, and go the whole nine like Madonna.
-- Big Pun -
I would really love to do a musical, I don't know in what capacity but something funny.
-- Billie Piper -
A musical film is my idea of heaven. You can pre-record, you don't have to sing live. Singing live was the bit I hated the most. I never felt like a confident singer.
-- Billie Piper -
I'll come in with a string of riffs and direct the musical ideas. But you still need a band and their input to make the ideas come alive. You can't underestimate band chemistry.
-- Billy Corgan -
We passed the hash pipe and played our Doors tapes.
-- Billy Joel -
Very often I suspend my musical sensibilities to enjoy music as a fan.
-- Billy Sheehan -
I grew up in a very musical family, my father was a musician and a big band leader and made records.
-- Billy Sherwood -
I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse.
-- Bing Crosby -
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 -
Being a musician is very easy. My house is full of musical instruments. There's a lot of music, always.
-- Bjork -
I have a pretty good math mind, so I can see patterns, but I don't have a great ear. It's like a tragedy - I can see so much more natural musical ability in so many other people.
-- Bo Burnham -
Fred Sturm has proven to be a great asset to the musical world as a teacher, composer and author. His gifts have enriched the musical life of all the people who have been fortunate enough to share his wisdom and musicality.
-- Bob Brookmeyer -
The Harmonica is the world’s best-selling musical instrument. You’re welcome.
-- Bob Dylan -
My biggest musical influences are probably my parents.
-- Bobby McFerrin -
One ends up relying on pure musical inspiration, and failing that, the music won't lead to anything good, or it will alienate all but the most die-hard fans.
-- Boris Vian -
I really just followed my musical instincts every step of my life.
-- Boz Scaggs -
What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.
-- Branford Marsalis -
I believe I became one of the first singers to be launched via television exposure. I guess I was a new kind of musical stylist for a new kind of media.
-- Brenda Lee -
Now it looks like I'll be known as the musical comedy guy. Which is good news for me. Or I'll be known as the New Zealand idiot.
-- Bret McKenzie -
My musical director, Mark Cherry, is the most wonderful person who ever lived on God's good green Earth. He's my director, he does the arrangements. Really, he does everything - including certain janitorial chores!
-- Brett Somers -
In every interview I've got to explain something about being white but still being into hip hop. It's gone way beyond the musical aspect of the business. And I'm as critical about music as everybody else is.
-- Brian Austin Green -
I'm always looking for a kind of new musical entity to sort of move into a motion picture venue
-- Brian De Palma -
If you had a sign above every studio door saying ‘This Studio is a Musical Instrument’ it would make such a different approach to recording.
-- Brian Eno -
There are certain sounds that I've found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.
-- Brian Eno -
I frequently compose out the entire metric structure of a piece in modified cyclic form, where each cyclic revolution undergoes some form of 'variation' much as if measure lengths were concrete musical 'material.'
-- Brian Ferneyhough -
The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics.
-- Brian Ferneyhough -
It's funny... musical theater is what paid my rent and kept me going for the longest time.
-- Bryan Batt -
I love you," he said, his voice almost musical with happiness. She shot him a scowl. "Isn't saying that a bit dangerous considering these aren't wooden swords and the ends aren't even taped?" He laughed.
-- C.C. Hunter -
The musical is the one area of the theater that can give you the biggest buzz of all.
-- Cameron Mackintosh -
I wanted to be a musical theatre actress - I wanted to play Sally Bowles, forever and ever always.
-- Carey Mulligan -
A musician cannot move others unless he, too, is moved.
-- Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach -
If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it.
-- Carlisle Floyd -
We went to see all the shows. American musical theater and jazz were very big.
-- Carly Simon -
Well I had a musical background, but I still didn't know a lot about drums at the time.
-- Caroline Corr -
Nothing is so musical as the sound of pouring bourbon for the first drink on a Sunday morning. Not Bach or Schubert or any of those masters.
-- Carson McCullers -
Hopefully each film can be given a musical voice of its own, which is not to say that the instrumentation is always unique, but that the relationship between the sound and the image is unique.
-- Carter Burwell
