Classical Music Appreciation Quotes

I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven.

I think if there's ever been a time we need music more, it's now. For our kids, it teaches you to take time, to listen, to work together, to listen to other people, and to use your brain. That's why classical music doesn't work when you throw it at people in a subway platform while they're rushing to work. Classical music is something that needs to be contemplated, you have to be completely present with an active mind that's working. It's not background music.

My parents - Augustine Joseph and Elizabeth - discovered my talent for singing when I was a kid. I remember them telling me that I sang a classical piece after listening to it a couple of times when I was two-and-a-half years old.

I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.

I don't even want to say I'm trying to necessarily popularize classical music, I just want to take this thing, this cello, this sound, and make it artistic so people can understand it today.

The fact that most people do not understand and respect the very best things, such as Mozart's concertos, is what permits men like us to become famous.

Classical music in Venezuela is now something like a pop concert. You can see people screaming or crying because they don't have a ticket.

My family were all into classical music, and I found that very intimidating.

It's not that people don't like classical music. It's that they don't have the chance to understand and to experience it.

You're now getting a new breed of people like Il Divo and Andrea Bocelli and I think that's why people feel less intimidated by classical music than they once did.

Part of my mission is simply that: to bring the world of the arts, particularly classical music, closer to people so they don't feel that it is something remote that they have to specially prepare themselves for, or dress up for.

A good deal of classical music is, today, the opium of the good citizen.

In those projects with Sting and Josh Groban and people like that, I see a very interesting effect: their fans coming to my classical concerts, people who've never been to a classical show at all.

It's really funny how I've come round to classical music around the back door with my banjo in my hand, and I love it.

We have to go and show these people what classical music is. We say sometimes that classical music has a small audience, but it's because people don't have the chance to be closer to it.

In Germany, people feel like they own classical music, that it is somehow theirs. Over there, everyone still learns to play, and the great composers don't seem alien.

I dig Strauss and Wagner, those cats are good...

If you're alive, you have all the experience necessary to understand classical music.

But there's a thin line between songwriting and arranging. ... Recording at home enables one to eliminate the demo stage, and the presentation stage in the studio, too. ... And I think it's safe to say that the single very impressive figure to me was Merle Haggard. ... Dylan can do no wrong. ... Glenn Gould was my hero. Glenn Gould was my idol. I loved him. ... I loved Hendrix. I mean, really, really loved him. As if he were one of the great classical composers. And he was. That's how I saw him.

I wanted to make an album where every song is kind of interacting - where you can't tell what's the string arrangement and what's the song. I guess that came out of going to college, majoring in music, studying classical music, and even as a kid, being really drawn to classical music.