Historical Music Quotes

I've always been heavily influenced by classical music, mostly by baroque music.

Very old music is, like, 11th century in my mind. That's very old.

When I began playing the lute, in 1950 there were not too many lutenists around. I had to work hard, writing out music in museums and libraries. It was before the days of photocopying. And I had just picked up the lute, adapted my guitar technique to it and went from there.

There's the historical part of The Beach Boys' music; it's pretty incredible, pretty vast and pretty varied too.

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.

If we got into a time machine and went back to the 1700s, classical and baroque music would have been the equivalent of Beyonce and Jay-Z.

I personally am into the minstrel technique - if I hear someone playing a lute or playing a crumhorn, it just moves me. I don't know why.

I think there's probably really wonderful music that has been lost due to the lack of preservation methods way back in the day.

In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.

I'm very inspired by past music.

I listen to a lot of medieval music.

I'd like to do a complete album of covers with no songs written after 1937.

There's an institution here called the National Sound Archive, and there's a character who works there, Paul Wilson. He takes a very special interest in the history of the music and advised Martin Davidson of the existence of these tapes.

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.

I was passionately interested in Elizabethan history at school, so it was natural for me as a musician to take interest in the music of that period.

All old music was modern once, and much more of the music of yesterday already sounds more old-fashioned than works which were written three centuries ago.

The singer-songwriter has always played music that was stylistically rooted in the '30s and the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. But the fact of the matter is that none of us remember the Depression firsthand.

Because of the fashion, the young people don't have any access to the history of music, unless people like me revive it. There are very few people to revive it, because you can't earn any money doing it.

I would still love to do more Handel. I think Handel was a fantastic composer. I did lots of Vivaldi, but it's also important to do the music of Handel, one of the greatest composers of the 18th century.

Strangely, the thing I listen to 75% of the time, when I'm exercising with my headphones on is English Tudor/Elizabethan music, so music from about 1450 to the early 1600's.

It was by music that the ancient kings gave elegant expression to their joy. By their armies and axes they gave the same to their anger.

I learned by transcribing songs out of the Library of Congress collection in Washington where I was working. I got a job when I just turned twenty in 1939 and Alan [Lomax] needed some help. I listened to hundreds of records every week.

I feel like I'll be writing World War 2 music the rest of my life.

I'm an old fan of the Negro spirituals.

Trying to write music that's sensitive to 400 years ago takes a bit of madness, as it's such a long stretch of time.