Top 100 Quotes About Contemporary Music
#1. I don't think anyone listening to my music needs any special knowledge. They don't need to have a background in contemporary music. They don't need to go to new-music concerts all the time in order to be able to understand it.
Missy Mazzoli
#2. My musical life started with hearing and being fascinated by contemporary music.
Elliott Carter
#3. I've always loved the blues, ever since I was a kid. It has a depth to it that a lot of contemporary music doesn't have. It has pain and suffering in it, but funny stories, too. And it is built on storytelling, which is something I really love.
Nickolas Ashford
#4. The first thing that struck me about contemporary music in general had been thatthere was not much interest in rhythm.
Elliott Carter
#5. My favorite composers are the ones that tell the story. I love Wagner. I love Mahler. Prokofiev. The programmatic music. I listen more to classic rock because I don't like the contemporary music very much.
Patti LuPone
#6. In contemporary music, the challenge for me is to make the recorder sound as naturally expressive as, for example, the violin - without doing it too much and forcing the instrument. It is very easy to be overly expressive on the recorder, and finding the balance is quite difficult.
Michala Petri
#7. Georgian folk music has more new musical ideas than all the contemporary music.
[Los Angeles Times. 26.02.1990]
Igor Stravinsky
#8. We live in a modern world, and in contemporary music the central fact is contamination. Not the contamination of disease but the contamination of musical styles. If you find this in me, that is good.
Ennio Morricone
#9. One of the central flaws in the state of contemporary music is that the major record companies have failed to incorporate that simple fact into their business plans. They've come into an industry that's based on idiosyncratic artists and tried to erase every idiosyncratic aspect out of it.
Moby
#10. When the Domaine Musical started up, I wasn't part of it. They were the major players in contemporary music at that time, braodcasting old and new composers' work. And I wasn't one of them.
Luc Ferrari
#11. These wealthy people were very interested in contemporary music. They wanted to help diffuse it and get it to be known to other people.
Elliott Carter
#12. Then, when the Depression came, all of this changed completely. Since that time, the entire public is of a very different sort and there was not so much support for contemporary music in a direct way.
Elliott Carter
#13. I wanted contemporary music to be treated the same as the traditional repertoire - performed regularly by people who knew each other and the music. That is the way you convince an audience.
Pierre Boulez
#14. You know, I listen to contemporary music all the time.
Brian De Palma
#15. Morley is one of the outstanding voices of her generation, as a singer, songwriter and bandleader she's in a class of her own, transcends all categories and is making a major contribution to contemporary music.
David Amram
#16. Obviously there are pieces of classical music that are some of the most beautiful music ever written, for me anyway is a lot of classical or contemporary music, so it's a different kind of space that you enter when you're listening to it.
Bryce Dessner
#17. The contemporary music of Tina Turner might make you feel powerful and energized. South African music provides a mind-boggling choice of styles from folk tunes to jive. Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony has the magical ability to transport you to a country scene and trap you in a driving rain storm.
Jason Harvey
#18. My mother was a classical pianist and my stepfather was an industrialist who was passionate about composing contemporary music.
Carla Bruni
#19. My work has been marginalized as far as the jazz-business complex is concerned, or the contemporary-music complex.
Anthony Braxton
#20. Even though I've been an avid consumer of contemporary music since my early teens, the world of rock music has always been at something of a distance - I listen to it, read about it, I talk about it, but I've had little or no contact with its denizens.
William Boyd
#21. I've not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I'll listen to 'Spiral Scratch' by the Buzzcocks, or 'Hippy Hippy Shake' by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.
Billy Childish
#22. Post-minimalism implies music that's genre-less. Minimalism was very important because it came at a time when contemporary music had become so complex, so experimental and detached that people turned away from it. Minimalism broke that trend and brought music back to the people.
Maya Beiser
#23. I mean the public likes it more in Europe than they do here because the state supported organizations have felt that playing contemporary music was part of the education of the public.
Elliott Carter
#24. It was a staggering moment when I first heard the news. Lennon was a most talented man and above all, a gentle soul. John and his colleagues set a high standard by which contemporary music continues to be measured.
Frank Sinatra
#25. My parents met in music school and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing. There was a lot of Mozart and the Beatles.
Sara Zarr
#26. I have always personally preferred to think of what is more difficult for my instrument, and not what is the most natural or the easiest. I enjoy the challenges - especially those that come with composers who have written contemporary music for the recorder.
Michala Petri
#27. The whole rise of new adult contemporary music and smooth jazz was a nice surprise.
Kenny G
#28. Tyler, I'd marry you again in a heartbeat. You are my fairy tale.
Rachel Harris
#29. Bass players have bigger instruments." Charlie's slow grin curled her toes and he added, "We also do it deeper.
Rachel Harris
#30. With chemistry like theirs, this was the perfect setup for a fling ... and Sherry wanted to go out on a high note.
BRING ON THE ROADIE!
Rachel Harris
#31. He (Chuck Smith) was leery of music that moved the body more than the soul.
Larry Eskridge
#32. Just as all pop music is not simplistic, not all contemporary concert music is complex. Often what a person connects with goes much deeper than generalized issues of simplicity and complexity.
Michael Hersch
#33. I guess it was only fitting that to them PUNK was a four letter word. However, to people like Dylan and I-punk was our hearts-our souls. We grew up with a lot of uncertainties. To be a teenager isn't always pretty, and our music reflected that.
Brian Joyce
#34. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She didn't need to turn around to know he was standing behind her. Most likely with a smirk at catching her impromptu belly dance.
Rachel Harris
#35. FKA Twigs is stunning. She has beautiful contemporary and unique sound with an almost psychedelic vibe. Her music is great for the runway.
Chelsea Leyland
#36. Couples swayed and embraced to the beat as the singer's vocals soared above a group of confused teenagers and twenty-something's.
Brian Joyce
#37. We do treat books surprisingly lightly in contemporary culture. We'd never expect to understand a piece of music on one listen, but we tend to believe we've read a book after reading it just once.
Ali Smith
#38. The dusty library air is electric with secrets/ almost palpable in the thick quiet that bounces between/ Cal and those books and me
Stasia Ward Kehoe
#39. Music may be his passion
but this, right here, was his dream.
Rachel Harris
#40. What were we, but kids with apartments and jobs anyway?
Brian Joyce
#41. The technical history of modern harmony is a history of growth of toleration by the human ear of chords that at first sounded discordant and senseless to the main body of contemporary professional musicians.
George Bernard Shaw
#42. Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.
Michael Eric Dyson
#43. When the silence bores you, let the music play; when the music bores you, let the silence play!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#44. I guess what's most important is that we chose to live with our hearts open and to let our experiences show us the way towards our brightest days.
Brian Joyce
#45. Everyone plays guitar alone, but we can play side by side.
Jennifer Lane
#46. What's good is that my music is different from everyone else's. It's got the soul element, like Duffy, but it's not very retro. It's a contemporary, pop, fresh sound. That's what makes it different.
Pixie Lott
#47. You know-portraits are odd things." "How do you figure?" I asked. "Well at the time, that portrait told the whole story. It told the truth. We were a family-a happy family. Now that same portrait just looks like a lie.
Brian Joyce
#48. Society gets by from the help of its citizens.
Brian Joyce
#49. My happy place, huh? Well, yeah, I guess that's what music is for me.
Rachel Harris
#50. Baby girl, you destroy me," he whispered against her lips. "You have to tell me if you don't want this because I'm holding on by a thread."
"Then let go," she whispered in reply.
Rachel Harris
#51. If music were wind, I would live in a hurricane.
Jessica Bell
#52. That girl's heart is bigger than Texas." Her eyes narrowed. "And it's as tender as a baby's butt. You take care with it, you hear?
Rachel Harris
#53. Writing songs is about trying to connect with people on a deeper spiritual level - but I'm not a fan of contemporary Christian music.
Ryan Tedder
#54. In times such as these, life often begs us to seek answers when in reality there are only questions available.
Brian Joyce
#55. Because it exists as a living sonority, music is animated by voices, and these voices do not evaporate when music confronts the insights of contemporary literary criticism, or philosophy of language.
Carolyn Abbate
#56. But you know in the contemporary art world, you pose a very interesting conundrum. All sorts of people collect very contemporary art, yet when it comes to the music which is analogous to that sort of art, they are not interested, or perhaps even hostile.
Michael Tilson Thomas
#57. That night, he laid in his bed thinking about all the possibilities. They came like waves in his mind. At first they came slow, then gradually built up speed, cresting into full on dreams, until finally, they broke onto the shore with all of their reality. First dreams, then nightmares.
Brian Joyce
#58. Elvis is sweet, but I prefer sleeping with you.
Rachel Harris
#59. As he hums the melody softly into my ear, I can feel the notes seep deep into my skin and bones, and birth an ache in my soul I never knew existed. What is this, if not impossible?
Ashley Poston
#60. Eventually, that feeling fades, but there is always the memory of those days. When you're young, everything is butterflies. What I mean is - it's all new. I guess he was telling you to still believe, to hold on to your butterflies.
Brian Joyce
#61. I'd argue that contemporary hip-hop is written (or at least the music is) to be heard in cars with systems like the one below. The massive volume seems to be more about sharing your music with everyone, gratis!
David Byrne
#62. Christopher was wearing a suit and adorned make-up. As long as I had known him, he never wore a suit or make-up. The look of him defenseless to his appearance saddened me.
Brian Joyce
#63. If he was like any of his music, he would be complex, explosive, sweet, sensual, and passionate.
Kailin Gow
#64. My flight arrives at eight in the morning," he mentioned casually. "Any chance you can come and get me?"
...
"Pick you up from the airport? That seems hardcore, Ty. Normally, I'm married to a guy for at least a couple weeks before I take that big a step.
Rachel Harris
#65. I write contemporary rock with Jane's. And I also write house music with people like Kascade.
Perry Farrell
#66. She was the only one who made him hear music. The only one who made him feel home. The only one who wanted nothing more than for him to be plain, simple Will Truitt.
Jamie Farrell
#67. Her wide, gorgeous smile was the culprit. It was pure magic. Neighbors lined the parking lot, eager to empty their pockets, all so she'd shine that beam on them.
Rachel Harris
#68. No one who's been into music ever really stops being into it. It's in your soul forever. Maybe it gets buried deep under piles of shit for a while, but it's always there, waiting to make you happy again.
Ophelia London
#69. We were really interested in music from all over the world. We realized that what we were doing was very close to contemporary classical music because of the lack of tonality in the guitar- the fact that I play guitar the way I play.
Arto Lindsay
#70. It is not that I don't like contemporary country music because I do. I love it. I have recorded a lot and have had great success recording records that have not been very traditional country records.
Vince Gill
#72. Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them.
Brian Ferneyhough
#73. It's as if Mom was expressing herself in a language other than English; a language that Grandma wouldn't be able to interpret simply by looking at the music notes.
Tessa Emily Hall
#74. So when I got to be about 13 or 14, I started listening - even though my parents music was way cool - to contemporary hard rock at that time, which was Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Ted Nugent and all that, and that's just where I came from.
Slash
#75. Many contemporary composers have been building walls of sounds following their own clever devices. But then, who lives inside those rooms?
Toru Takemitsu
#76. Steampunk, the repurposing of Victorian culture and technology for contemporary fun and profit, is so ubiquitous - in media, books, fashion, music, cosplay, and maker culture - that we tend to imagine its superficial aspects are all that define it.
Paul Di Filippo
#77. I listen to very little music, particularly contemporary. If I listen to it, it's going to be my own music, some arrangement or something. I spend so much time listening that the way I relax is by watching things, a comedy; that's my way to wind down.
Kate Bush
#78. Though everyone who mattered to him told him to walk away, though Lindsey herself told him to walk away, he was still here. And she was still glad.
Jamie Farrell
#79. For me, personally, the most interesting music comes from the popular sector - from film and pop music - since contemporary classical music got stuck and went into directions where it lost a lot of the public by over-intellectualizing.
Aleksey Igudesman
#80. Character isn't something you talk about; it's something you show through your actions-through your every day habits.
Brian Joyce
#81. Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing ... Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice
Greil Marcus
#83. What a good morning it was. Tyler stood before her, six-plus feet of denim-clad hotness. A woodsy scent wafted toward her, and she inhaled deeply, loving the smell of his cologne. The man was gorgeous, and he was hers for the next twenty-four hours.
Rachel Harris
#84. Maybe she knew some day it would become my job. My job to complete the melody she had begun.
Tessa Emily Hall
#85. The low E is at the top, the second string is A, then it's D, G, B, and the last one is high E." A mnemonic device he once heard came to mind and, plucking the strings, he said, "Eddie Ate Dynamite ... Good Bye Eddie,.
Rachel Harris
#86. Staring into his eyes, she noticed a thin circle of gray around the green.
A SILVER LINING, she thought.
Rachel Harris
#87. A toast," she declared. "To an incredible summer kicking butt and chasing dreams.
Rachel Harris
#88. She simply wanted one night to live out her fantasy. For as long as she could remember, Charlie Tucker had been the guy, and tonight, all she wanted was for him to see her as more than just a little kid. To actually see her as someone desirable.
To simple see ... her.
Rachel Harris
#90. Popularity is like a girl in class that you can't ignore. She give you eyes when no one looks then turns to her friends and laughs some more.
Brian Joyce
#91. The music that I've made in the past has had strong contemporary country roots, but I think moving on in music, I will branch out from that a bit.
Jennette McCurdy
#92. In the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra we play such a diversity of music, with 10 arrangers in the band, we don't really worry about whether it's contemporary or not.
Wynton Marsalis
#93. Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.
Pete Seeger
#94. The only thing I wanted to accomplish was to finally get recognized by the music industry. If you know the awards, answer me this question: Do you see an award for soul music? No. They have R&B, funk, hip-hop and all sorts of contemporary things.
Sharon Jones
#95. I am a classical music lover - not necessarily the contemporary stuff, but the old stuff.
Eberhard Weber
#96. Dream-start with dream. Start tonight-become who you want-dream big!" He became animated at this point, "No money needed for dreams. Dreams are free.
Brian Joyce
#97. They're great instrumentalists, singers and songwriters and they have this unique way of blending contemporary with traditional. The result is this beautiful mix of timeless music.
Cindy Cashdollar
#98. Charles Tucker had starred in Ella's dreams ever since she was fourteen.
Rachel Harris
#99. Underground electronic music is art - fundamentally it's based on contemporary art, culture, dance, and real music. If you look at EDM, how many of those cultural standpoints are the same?
Seth Troxler
#100. The price of coming from a small town is that everyone knows your story. Your book has been read, shelved, dusted, and re-read by everybody.
Brian Joyce
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