Top 100 The Conductor Quotes
#1. I might be like a conductor, or I collect the stuff together and I do a lot of my own writing. But what is a pleasure is the whole creative thing in which we're all excavating and trying to find something.
Simon McBurney
#2. The conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over - and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy accident.
Henry David Thoreau
#3. A conductor can do wild things which can feel forced, but if you're directing from within the orchestra, you can't do that, things have to feel natural.
Joshua Bell
#4. It's different for people who have not seen a symphony conductor conduct from a chair. I feel very connected to the orchestra in a way that a conductor sometimes does not feel. I think it's more visceral.
Joshua Bell
#6. The principal task of a conductor is not to put himself in evidence but to disappear behind his functions as much as possible. We are pilots, not servants.
Franz Liszt
#7. I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.
Harriet Tubman
#8. I can't even touch another conductor's baton. The center of gravity, the feel of the handle, puts me totally off.
Jeffrey Tate
#9. I mean, the great secret is that an orchestra can actually play without a conductor at all. Of course, a great conductor will have a concept and will help them play together and unify them.
Joshua Bell
#10. When I'm having a rehearsal and there are new guys who come in to try out for the job, I always let my conductor rehearse them. Because I don't want the guy to get bent out of shape, because I walk in.
Ray Charles
#11. Only when every one of us and every nation learns the secret of love for all mankind will the world become a great orchestra, following the beat of the Greatest Conductor of all.
Artur Rodzinski
#12. [As a conductor] there has to be, between me and the orchestra, an unshakable bond of trust, born out of mutual respect, through which we can spin a musical narrative that we all believe in.
Charles Hazlewood
#13. In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.
Kurt Masur
#14. You stand exactly in the middle, poised between heaven and earth, a human conductor for the energy that seeks to flow between these two polarities.
Margot Anand
#15. At every moment, each instrument knew what to play. Its little bit. But none could see the whole thing like this, all at once, only its own part. Just like life. Each person was like a line of music, but nobody knew what the symphony sounded like. Only the conductor had the whole score.
Janet Fitch
#16. A conductor should reconcile himself to the realization that regardless of his approach or temperament the eventual result is the same-the orchestra will hate him.
Oscar Levant
#17. A great conductor possesses that certain charisma and talent that demand the ears and the attention of an audience. I can't tell you how that happens, but I'm sure it has an inner basis that is never learned.
Isaac Stern
#18. In this symphony that is my life, God is not content to be a member of the audience or stage crew. He is not even content to be the conductor. He wants to be the composer.
Brad Wilcox
#19. There was that sound again
snap, then a footfall. She tried to whirl around as a dark form
Dear God
sprang with a splash from the darkness
grabbed her from behind, shoved her under the water.
Kaye George
#20. A certain fire pretends to be alive; it awakens. Working its way along the hand as a conductor, it reaches the support and engulfs it; then a leaping spark closes the circle it was to trace, coming back to the eye and beyond.
Paul Klee
#21. If we turn to the divine Conductor and follow the wise and loving baton that is His will, His Word, then the music of our life will be a symphony.
Peter Kreeft
#22. The orchestra confides in me about their music director or their conductor, and I've never seen a conductor that's been liked by everyone.
Joshua Bell
#23. I don't feel that the conductor has real power. The orchestra has the power, and every member of it knows instantaneously if you're just beating time.
Itzhak Perlman
#24. So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.
Ruggiero Ricci
#25. From time to time, the Vienna Philharmonic could play without a conductor because they are so good.
Bernard Arnault
#26. ...my life is the train wreck. You, my dear, are the conductor on the Hot Mess Express
B.L. Berry
#27. The conductor is the artistic leader and sometimes cultural arbiter of his or her community. It is their leadership that is looked to and should anything go wrong, they are the persons taking most of the heat.
Leonard Slatkin
#28. My whole life, I've been watching conductors. I was 7 the first time I played with a conductor. Seeing the ones that do it well, it's an amazing thing.
Joshua Bell
#29. I prefer it when the conductor follows me. It is more difficult to work with a conductor who does not listen - even if I understand that sometimes it makes sense when one person is ruling everything. But for bel canto, I have to have a conductor who listens and supports me.
Anna Netrebko
#30. Belief conducts the symphony of our thoughts.
While moments dance to that symphony.
Want better moments?
Choose to be a better conductor.
Charles F. Glassman
#31. In getting good results team leaders become conductor rather than driver, enabling others to play the right music, not by hands-on domination of all decisions and execution, but by providing inspiration, motivation and stimulus.
Robert Heller
#32. The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake.
Richard Sennett
#33. I told him what I thought and he suddenly leapt into the air with joy, like a child: 'Also, wirklich, gut?' [So it was really good?]. Such a titan, and so unsure of himself.
Sviatoslav Richter
#34. A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.
Sol LeWitt
#35. Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment, or between the individual and his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightning-conductor of his existence.
Samuel Beckett
#36. A music director cannot and should not be chosen on the basis of a first date. It is not so difficult to make a good impression with a single appearance, usually containing some of a conductor's party pieces, works they have performed successfully many times before.
Leonard Slatkin
#37. Somehow, conductor as this superhuman conduit between the masters and the masterpieces and the immortals.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
#38. conductor of heat, knowing how to control the temperature and to take advantage of its heating properties is vital when you cook with cast iron. This chapter tells you everything that you need to know. Of course, having a few recipes
Tracy L. Barr
#39. A conductor has to know how to translate music into a communicative force that makes the listener want to hear what he has to say.
Isaac Stern
#40. Zeal, the blind conductor of the will.
John Dryden
#41. Let me say that I've never thought to conduct because the conductor has to think to the music before the orchestra. And the orchestra comes later. For me, it's terrible.
Andrea Bocelli
#42. The whole duty of a conductor is comprised in his ability to indicate the right tempo.
Richard Wagner
#43. Haute couture is like an orchestra, for which only Balenciaga is the conductor. The rest of us are just musicians, following the directions he gives us.
Christian Dior
#44. All the conductor has to do is stand back and try not to get in the way. Mozart is doing all the work.
Colin R. Davis
#45. An air of infinite reluctance M. Poirot climbed aboard the train. The conductor climbed after him.
Agatha Christie
#47. The conductor was eating a young ladies' cinema nibble with a rigid, humourless expression, as though it was the doorstop or hunk of sausage that would have accorded with his personality.
Joseph Roth
#48. As a conductor I find the hardest tasks are to listen to the instinct of a musician and to hear the music behind the notes.
Edward Gardner
#49. I'm a geek and I'm a nerd, and I can listen into any piece of music. I think, I can usually tell you what orchestra it was, I can usually tell you what hall it was in. I can tell you, obviously who the conductor was, and who the composer was.
Hans Zimmer
#50. Gioacchino Rossini, the composer of William Tell and many other operas, had a good grasp of the relationship between music and food: "What love is to the heart, appetite is to the stomach. The stomach is the conductor that leads and livens up the great orchestra of our emotions." If
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#51. I like to create the music I hear in my interior. As a conductor, you have the ability to squeeze the sounds and interpretation you asked for from 50 to 80 people.
Eberhard Weber
#52. I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry.
Leon Theremin
#53. [A conductor's] happiness does not come from only his own story and his joy of the music. The joy is about enabling other people's stories to be heard at the same time.
Itay Talgam
#54. That smell mixed with the scent of getting tied up and fucked became the smell of complete release, of an orchestra connected by the simple movements of a skilled conductor.
C.D. Reiss
#55. The great conductor is always a despot by temperament and intractable in his ways ... The artist is obliged to keep his laughter and tears to himself. If they want to emerge, in spite of himself, then he must hide them or unleash them in someone else.
Nadia Boulanger
#56. Reporters of each channel smudging into each other to get that exclusive sound byte. It looked like BEST bus passengers circling the conductor to buy tickets.
Aditya Magal
#57. Being a director or a conductor is a balance of many things. And to do it right is a very difficult tightrope to walk. I've come to the conclusion that there's really no way to be one hundred percent popular as conductor.
Joshua Bell
#58. It is when music is added that a film can come to life for a director. A live orchestra, playing the score as a conductor watches the film on a huge screen, often gives a fimmaker the first real glimpse of his soon-to-be-completed work. That's where the magic is.
Robert Paul Wolff
#59. You are the conductor of your own attitude! Nobody else can compose your thoughts for you.
Lee J. Colan
#60. I want to introduce you to Jay, a 'bus-conductor and an idealist. She is not the heroine, but the most constantly apparent woman in this book. I cannot introduce you to a heroine because I have never met one.
Stella Benson
#61. In America, they have this nauseating habit of calling the conductor 'maestro'. I always slightly gag when the cor anglais player goes, 'Maestro, can I discuss bar 19 with you?'
Charles Hazlewood
#62. A dean is the conductor of an orchestra made up entirely of composers.
Mark William Roche
#63. Love is the foundation, the mechanism and the conductor of life.
Daniel Marques
#64. The symphony orchestra had played poorly, so the conductor was in a bad mood. That night he beat his wife
because the music hadn't been beautiful enough.
George Carlin
#66. The success of our operas rests most of the time in the hands of the conductor. This person is as necessary as a tenor or a prima donna.
Giuseppe Verdi
#67. Ticket and passport. We're crossing the border."
"Oh. Sorry." Dan handed the conductor his ticket.
"Grazie."
"De nada," Dan said.
"That's Spanish," Amy whispered.
"No, it's whatever," Dan said. "I'm too tired to think.
Jude Watson
#68. Suffering was not a punishment from beyond or a malevolent infestation of the soul. Like the earth turning on its axis or energy passing through a conductor, it was a part of the natural world, to be studied, understood, and, when possible, managed.
Joshua Wolf Shenk
#69. There were so many specific things from high school jazz band that I remembered: the conductor searching out people who were out of tune, or stopping and starting me for hours in front of the band as they watched.
Damien Chazelle
#70. You're about to be the conductor on the most brilliant, runaway train in showbiz. Good luck you'll love it.
Dermot O'Leary
#71. The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.
Nicholas Meyer
#72. What love is to the heart, appetite is to the stomach. The stomach is the conductor that leads and livens up the great orchestra of our emotions.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#73. Born a slave, Harriet Tubman was determined not to remain one. She escaped from her owners in Maryland on the Underground Railroad in 1849 and then fearlessly returned thirteen times to help guide family members and others to freedom as the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad.
Susan Campbell Bartoletti
#74. The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer.
Elvin Jones
#76. The conductor is a peculiar person. He turns his back on his friends in the audience, shakes a stick at his players in the orchestra, and then wonders why nobody loves him.
Victor Borge
#77. 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
#78. I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him.
Damien Chazelle
#79. The end result of my personal story is that I became a really good drummer, and I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't have without this really tough conductor and this really cutthroat hostile environment I was in.
Damien Chazelle
#80. He raised his hands and, guided by a redeeming impulse of truth-like a conductor leading his orchestra in a grand symphony-finally set fingers to keyboard and let the melody of his story dance across the screen
Jose Rodrigues Dos Santos
#82. Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stick out your wand hand, step on board, and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be your conductor this eve -
J.K. Rowling
#83. You are the composer and conductor and thus decide what key of life to live. I choose major over minor whenever I can.
Susan Reynolds
#84. [On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've gotten over my original astonishment.
Nadia Boulanger
#85. If life is a song, and God is the divine conductor, I must consider these trials and troubles as the harmony of my song, for every song needs more than a melody!
Evinda Lepins
#86. 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
#87. A lot of entrepreneurs let ego get in the way. You've got to be the conductor. You can't play all the instruments yourself. You have to get others to work together.
Bill Rancic
#88. Classic music somehow changed, and it changed between the first and the second world wars, and somehow what happened was that the hero that had been the composer, the hero now was the performer, and especially the conductor.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
#89. It's no more normal to be a bank-manager or a bus-conductor, than to be Baudelaire or Genghis Khan,' Moreland had once remarked. 'It just happens there are more of the former types.
Anthony Powell
#90. [To the patronizing train conductor who had twice said, 'Auntie, give me your ticket':] Which of my sister's sons are you?
Mary McLeod Bethune
#91. The conductor was so totally without expression he could have pulled off a bank robbery without covering his face.
Haruki Murakami
#92. I am still very proud of that concert. In America, the (musicians') connection with the conductor is as with management - it becomes political. You cannot conduct properly in this environment. I hate this enemy situation between management and orchestra members.
Neeme Jarvi
#93. Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.
Igor Stravinsky
#94. I had a year at 3 when I wanted to be a conductor in the opera.
Nina Arianda
#95. The most important thing for the conductor is that he or she listens. Her listening will make things sound a certain way. If the conductor listens well, the musicians listen each other better. The conductor can in effect impose a certain kind of listening for everybody.
Laurence Equilbey
#96. We should think of the church as an orchestra in which the different churches play on different instruments while a Divine Conductor calls the tune.
William Ralph Inge
#97. If you ever go to a music session, you'll notice that the musicians can sit down and start playing right away, and everyone knows what to do. Of course they're reading it, but the conductor can tweak little things, and you can take that back to directing motion pictures.
Clint Eastwood
#98. Good conductors know when to let an orchestra lead itself. Ninety percent of what a conductor does comes in the rehearsal - the vision, the structure, the architecture.
Joshua Bell
#99. Is it not the business of the conductor to convey to the public in its dramatic form the central idea of a composition; and how can he convey that idea successfully if he does not enter heart and soul into the life of the music and the tale it unfolds?
John Philip Sousa
#100. In fact, these terms devised by Franklin are the ones we still use today, along with other neologisms that he coined to describe his findings: battery, charged, neutral, condense, and conductor.
Walter Isaacson
