“Perhaps the chief requirement of [the conductor] is that he be humble before the composer; that he never interpose himself between the music and the audience; that all his efforts, however strenuous or glamorous, be made in the service of the composer's meaning - the music itself, which, after all, is the whole reason for the conductor's existence.”

— Leonard Bernstein

The Cambridge Companion to Conducting p. 16.

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Leonard Bernstein 17

American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and p… 1918–1990

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 3 : Explaining the Obvious

“I can respect the artistic aim of a composer if he arrives at the so-called modern idiom after an intense period of preparation…Such composers know what they are doing when they break a law; they know what to react against, because they have had experience in the classical forms and style. Having mastered the rules, they know which can be violated and which should be obeyed. But, I am sorry to say, I have found too often that young composers plunge into the writing of experimental music with their school lessons only half learned. Too much radical music is sheer sham, for this very reason: its composer sets about revolutionizing the laws of music before he learned them himself.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Interviewed by David Ewen in The Etude, 1941; cited from Josiah Fisk and Jeff Nichols (eds.) Composers on Music (Boston, MA: Northeastern Universities Press, 1997) pp. 235-6

“… there is no point to musical analysis at all unless it is 'two-dimensional' – unless […] one examines the music in terms of what I call its 'Background' (and this 'Background' is the sum total of the expectations which the composer creates) and its 'Foreground' (and its 'Foreground' is what he does instead). That is to say, the composer creates certain expectations, well-defined expectations, which he proceeds to meaningfully contradict. There is therefore a strong relation between 'Background' and 'Foreground', between that which happens and that which lies at its back – or to put it the other way round, between that which the composer leads you to expect, and that which he does instead…”

Hans Keller (1919–1985) Austrian-British musician and writer

Hans Keller, Lecture on Beethoven's Op.130, BBC broadcast from Leeds University, 1973.

“In the world of music, it is a rarity to find a person who is both a gifted composer and a top conductor. So it is in economics as well. Paul is that rarity. When Paul is writing, the sun is always out. His writing—ever eloquent, ever stirring—is done with the kind of verve that one seldom finds today.”

Michael Szenberg (1934) American economist

10.Paul Samuelson is a Great Maestro.
Ten Ways to Know Paul A. Samuelson (2006)

“I don't know the names of any pop musicians. Pop music is standardised; it's made to please the largest audience possible. I also compose to please a large audience, but when you listen to my music, you understand that I have studied and applied the whole history of composition.”

Ennio Morricone (1928–2020) Italian composer, orchestrator and conductor

“A good conductor ought to be a good chauffeur; the qualities that make the one also make the other. They are concentration, an incessant control of attention, and presence of mind; the conductor only has to add a little sense of music.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Quoted in Oskar von Riesemann (trans. Dolly Rutherford) Rachmaninoff's Recollections (New York: Macmillan, 1934) p. 155.

“Those who look for contradictions will be amply satisfied. The profession of a performer is full of paradoxes, and he has to learn to live with them. He has to forget himself and control himself; he has to observe the composer's wishes to the letter and create the music on the spot; he has to be part of the music market and yet retain his integrity.”

Alfred Brendel (1931) Austrian pianist, poet, and author

Alfred Brendel (1976), as cited in: Benny Shanon (2013). The Representational and the Presentational. p. 380.

“I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach.”

Glenn Gould (1932–1982) Canadian pianist

Gramophone
Context: I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. I really can't think of any other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, is valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that -- its humanity.

“Emptiness is a conductor
A conductor of heat
A conductor of Anything.”

Becky Stark (1976) American singer

Emptiness Is A Conductor
Artifacts Of The Winged (2003)

“As a mere fourteen-year-old child he composed songs in all the 72 Melakartha Raagas, which form the very backbone of the South Indian System of Raaga Music.”

M. Balamuralikrishna (1930–2016) Carnatic vocalist, instrumentalist and playback singer

Prince Rama Varma in: Murali And Me: A tribute by Prince Rama Varma http://www.webindia123.com/music/musicians/murali1.htm, Webindia123.com.

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