“The composer is now faced, not with further experiment but with the more difficult task of consolidating the experiments of this vertiginous period. He is like a man in a high-powered motor-car that has got out of control. He must either steer it away from the cliff's edge back to the road or leap out of it altogether. Most modern composers have chosen the latter plan, remarking, as they dexterously save their precious lives: "I think motor-cars are a little vieux jeu”

don't you?"
"The Age of Pastiche", p. 70.
Music, Ho! (1934)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The composer is now faced, not with further experiment but with the more difficult task of consolidating the experiment…" by Constant Lambert?
Constant Lambert photo
Constant Lambert 13
British composer and conductor 1905–1951

Related quotes

T.S. Eliot photo
Nevil Shute photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Lewis Mumford photo

“Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

My Works and Days (1979)

“I think the key image of the 20th century is the man in the motor car. It sums up everything: the elements of speed, drama, aggression, the junction of advertising and consumer goods with the technological landscape.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

Narration for Crash! (1971), a short film by Harley Cokeliss
Context: I think the key image of the 20th century is the man in the motor car. It sums up everything: the elements of speed, drama, aggression, the junction of advertising and consumer goods with the technological landscape. The sense of violence and desire, power and energy; the shared experience of moving together through an elaborately signalled landscape.
We spend a substantial part of our lives in the motor car, and the experience of driving condenses many of the experiences of being a human being in the 1970s, the marriage of the physical aspects of ourselves with the imaginative and technological aspects of our lives. I think the 20th century reaches its highest expression on the highway. Everything is there: the speed and violence of our age; the strange love affair with the machine, with its own death.

Stanley Baldwin photo
Piet Mondrian photo

“The artist make things move, and is moved. He is policeman, motor car, everything at once. He who makes things move also creates rest. That which aesthetically is brought to rest is art.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

In 'The Grand Boulevards' (of Paris), Piet Mondriaan, in 'De Groene Amsterdammer', 27 March 1920 pp. 4-5
1920's

George Bernard Shaw photo
Lee Evans photo

Related topics