Symphony Conductor Quotes

That was when they noticed that every musician on the stage was wearing mourning black. That was when they shut up. And when the conductor raised his arms, it was not a symphony that filled the cavernous space. It was the Song of Eyllwe. Then Song of Fenharrow. And Melisande. And Terrasen. Each nation that had people in those labour camps. And finally, not for pomp or triumph, but to mourn what they had become, they played the Song of Adarlan. When the final note finished, the conductor turned to the crowd, the musicians standing with him. As one, they looked to the boxes, to all those jewels bought with the blood of a continent. And without a word, without a bow or another gesture, they walked off the stage. The next morning, by royal decree, the theatre was shut down. No one saw those musicians or their conductor again.

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

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.

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.

Jobs had begun to drop acid by then, and he turned Brennan on to it as well, in a wheat field just outside Sunnyvale. "It was great," he recalled. "I had been listening to a lot of Bach. All of a sudden the whole field was playing Bach. It was the most wonderful feeling of my life up to that point. I felt like the conductor of this symphony with Bach coming through the wheat.

What are our conductors giving us year after year? Only fresh corpses. Over these beautifully embalmed sonatas, toccatas, symphonies and operas the public dance the jitterbug. Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties. From the churches comes the melancholy dirge of the dead Christ, a music which is no more sacred than a rotten turnip.

Violinists wear the imprint on their necks with pride For they are the players of harmony. Pilgrims, too, wear the imprint on their foreheads with pride For they are the conductors of unity. And Lovers? Why, they are made humble by the imprint on their hearts For they are merely the instruments of rhapsody.

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.

Knowledge is the orchestra, understanding is the conductor, wisdom is the symphony.

That was when they noticed that every musician on the stage was wearing mourning black. That was when they shut up. And when the conductor raised his arms, it was not a symphony that filled the cavernous space. It was the Song of Eyllwe. Then the Song of Fenharrow. And Melisande. And Terrasen. Each nation that had people in those labor camps. And finally, not for pomp or triumph, but to mourn what they had become, they played the Song of Adarlan. When the final note finished, the conductor turned to the crowd, the musicians standing with him. As one, they looked to the boxes, to all those jewels bought with the blood of a continent. And without a word, without a bow or another gesture, they walked off the stage. The next morning, by royal decree, the theater was shut down. No one saw those musicians or their conductor again.

We have come to love the music of proof. Logical connection for us is not some popular song about a finch, but a choral symphony, so difficult and so inspired that the conductor must exert all his energy to keep the performers under his control.

Operating theaters are not nearly as popular as dramatic theaters, musical theaters, and movie theaters, and it is easy to see why. A dramatic theater is a large, dark room in which actors perform a play, and if you are in the audience, you can enjoy yourself by listening to the dialog and looking at the costumes. A musical theater is a large, dark room in which musicians preform a symphony, and if you are in the audience you can enjoy yourself by listening to the melodies and watching the conductor wave his little stick around. And a movie theater is a large, dark room in which a projectionist shows a film, and if you are in the audience, you can enjoy yourself by eating popcorn and gossiping about movie stars. But an operating theater is a large, dark room in which doctors preform medical procedures, and if you are in the audience, the best thing to do is to leave at once because there is never anything on display in an operating theater but pain, suffering and discomfort, and for this reason most operating theaters have been closed down or have been turned into restaurants.

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

That was when they noticed that every musician on the stage was wearing mourning black. That was when they shut up. And when the conductor raised his arms, it was not a symphony that filled the cavernous space. It was the Song of Eyllwe. Then Song of Fenharrow. And Melisande. And Terrasen. Each nation that had people in those labour camps. And finally, not for pomp or triumph, but to mourn what they had become, they played the Song of Adarlan. When the final note finished, the conductor turned to the crowd, the musicians standing with him. As one, they looked to the boxes, to all those jewels bought with the blood of a continent. And without a word, without a bow or another gesture, they walked off the stage. The next morning, by royal decree, the theatre was shut down. No one saw those musicians or their conductor again.

Until she walked into my life I was simply a violin of rusted notes. In one night she rearranged the mess inside me, exposing the symphony was there all along it just needed a conductor to make my pulse compose to the harmonies of her celestial touch. Those notes are strung up neatly now, the five lines of the stave crammed with adulation, filling sheets, unleashing a sonata of adoration, drumming my heart and strumming my veins.

Just like life. Each person was like one line of music, but nobody knew what the symphony sounded like. Only the conductor had the whole score.

...and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.

An architect is a generalist, not a specialist-the conductor of a symphony, not a virtuoso who plays every instrument perfectly. As a practitioner, an architect coordinates a team of professionals that include structural and mechanical engineers, interior designers, building-code consultants, landscape architects, specifications writers, contractors, and specialists from other disciplines. Typically, the interests of some team members will compete with the interests of others. An architect must know enough about each discipline to negotiate and synthesize competing demands while honoring the needs of the client and the integrity of the entire project.

the Chicago Symphony was in a class by itself. Fritz Reiner, the famous Hungarian conductor, was fascinating to watch. He was somewhat stout, hunched over with round shoulders, and his arm and baton movements were tiny—you almost had to look at him with binoculars to see what he was doing. But those tiny movements forced the players to peer at him intently, and then he would suddenly raise his arms up over his head and the entire orchestra would go crazy.

I had been listening to a lot of Bach. All of a sudden the wheat field was playing Bach. It was the most wonderful feeling of my life up to that point. I felt like the conductor of this symphony with Bach coming through the wheat.

spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.

I used to sit here on the stoop as a kid and listen to the wind in the trees. It was only a few years ago that I realized this is the one place where it wasn't the wind that I was hearing, it was the trees. The wind was merely the conductor, but the trees were the symphony.

Mothers are artists, in their way, wouldn’t you say? They’re like symphony conductors of entire lives. They’re painters or sculptors. And not only is it really hard to shape clay into something really good, but that piece of clay is changing dramatically, all the time, even if you never touch it. A painting won’t get painted if you just leave the canvas alone but a child will still develop into something even if you neglect it. Each mom and each dad has to adapt to what they’re trying to make, hoping to make, and Mom and Dad also have to let that child turn into the creation he or she wants to be. Oh, and then lots and lots of moms and dads have to do this with two or three separate creations, simultaneously. Or, in the case of you, Ora Zella, with eleven creations. How is that not way more impressive than anything a great painter does? Picasso, Shmicasso.

Golf is the great conductor of life's symphony. Not in my lifetime have I seen anything with more ability to change the course of futures. It has the ability to build lasting relationships in a few short hours, promote executives, fund projects, build teams, break down barriers, and create an environment of deal-making, stress relief, and wellness. It's the one place where we willingly shut off our phones, turn away from distraction and become one with nature and ourselves. -Thank you for being a part of our symphony, Network & Golf

symphony isn’t what you’re going for. Leave the conductor and the sheet music behind. Build a jazz band instead. Jazz emphasizes individual spontaneity. The musicians know the overall structure of the song but have the freedom to improvise, riffing off one another other, creating incredible music. Of course, you can’t just remove the rules and processes, tell your team to be a jazz band, and expect it to be so. Without the right conditions, chaos will ensue. But now, after reading this book, you have a map. Once you begin to hear the music, keep focused. Culture isn’t something you can build up and then ignore. At Netflix, we are constantly debating our culture and expecting it will continually evolve. To build a team that is innovative, fast, and flexible, keep things a little bit loose. Welcome constant change. Operate a little closer toward the edge of chaos. Don’t provide a musical score and build a symphonic orchestra. Work on creating those jazz conditions and hire the type of employees who long to be part of an improvisational band. When it all comes together, the music is beautiful.

I hate Toscanini. I’ve never heard him in a concert hall, but I’ve heard enough of his recordings. What he does to music is terrible in my opinion. He chops it up into a hash and then pours a disgusting sauce over it. Toscanini ‘honoured’ me by conducting my symphonies. I heard those records, too, and they’re worthless. I’ve read about Toscanini’s conducting style and his manner of conducting a rehearsal. The people who describe this disgraceful behaviour are for some reason delighted by it. I simply can’t understand what they find delightful. I think it’s outrageous, not delightful. He screams and curses the musicians and makes scenes in the most shameless manner. The poor musicians have to put up with all this nonsense or be sacked. And they even begin to see ‘something in it’. (…) Toscanini sent me his recording of m Seventh Symphony and hearing it made me very angry. Everything is wrong. The spirit and the character and the tempi. It’s a sloppy, hack job. I wrote him a letter expressing my views. I don’t know if he ever got it; maybe he did and pretended not to – that would be completely in keeping with his vain and egoistic style. Why do I think that Toscanini didn’t let it be known that I wrote to him? Because much later I received a letter from America: I was elected to the Toscanini Society! They must have thought that I was a great fan of the maestro’s. I began receiving records on a regular basis: all new recordings by Toscanini. My only comfort is that at least I always have a birthday present handy. Naturally, I wouldn’t give something like that to a friend. But to an acquaintance-why not? It pleases them and it’s less trouble for me. That’s one of life’s most difficult problems- what to give for a birthday or anniversary to a person you don’t particularly like, don’t know very well, and don’t respect. Conductors are too often rude and conceited tyrants. And in my youth I often had to fight fierce battles with them, battles for my music and my dignity.

From Lee’s extensive quotes of Edwards on page 152 we can gather that the reason some reject good thoughts that might order their minds aright is because of a disposition of the heart, or a “taste” for evil. The habit of a person’s mind is in accordance with his spiritual appetite, a good man’s mind will always suggest and supply good and holy thoughts to connect ideas and information to create a beautiful picture in one’s mind of God’s orderly universe (Himself at the helm) but the evil man’s mind is habitually disorganizing the things of this world or rather dis-integrating them from the knowledge of God, and so Edwards might say that his mind is not a cosmos but a chaos, or a conductor-less cacophony rather than a grand symphony.

The seventh symphony is in no way in time. It is therefore in no way real. It occurs by itself, but as absent, as being out of reach. I cannot act upon it, change a single note of it, or slow down its movement. But it depends on the real for its appearance: that the conductor does not faint away, that a fire in the hall does not put an end to the performance. From this we cannot conclude that the seventh symphony has come to an end. No, we only think that the performance of the symphony has ceased. Does this not show clearly that the performance of the symphony is its analogue? It can manifest itself only through analogues which are dated and which unroll in our time. But to experience it on these analogues the imaginative reduction must be functioning, that is, the real sounds must be apprehended as analogues. It therefore occurs as a perpetual elsewhere, a perpetual absence. We must not picture it (as does spandrell in point counterpoint by huxley as so many platonisms) as existing in another world, in an intelligible heaven. It is not only outside time and space as are essences, for instance it is outside the real, outside existence. I do not hear it actually, i listen to it in the imaginary. Here we find the explanation for the considerable difficulty we always experience in passing from the world of the theatre or of music into that of our daily affairs. There is in fact no passing from one world into the other, but only a passing from the imaginative attitude to that of reality. Aesthetic contemplation is an induced dream and the passing into the real is an actual waking up.

Daniel Levitin is one of the world’s leading experts on how music influences the brain. He would be appearing with the conductor Edwin Outwater and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, which would play Beethoven. Levitin would explain how the music was affecting the audience’s collective brain. Levitin was no disinterested academic. He had had a serious career as a musician, performing with Sting, Mel Tormé, and Blue Öyster Cult, consulting with Stevie Wonder and Steely Dan, and having been recording engineer for Santana and the Grateful Dead. Then he—like Kahn—made a big switch and become a research psychologist, investigating how music interacts with the brain. He was now head of McGill University’s Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition and Expertise and author of This Is Your Brain on Music.

None of the old hustlers did that much harm. If they saw somebody good, they hired him. They tried to screw it up afterwards, but there was still a kind of dialogue between talent and the fellow up there in the front office. They had that old Russian-Jewish respect for the artist. All they did was say what they liked, and what they didn’t like, and argue with you. That’s easy to deal with. And sometimes the talent won. But once you got the educated producer, he has a desk, he’s gotta have a function, he’s gotta do something. He’s not running the studio and counting the money—he’s gotta be creative. That was Thalberg. The director became the fellow whose only job was to say, “Action” and “Cut.” Suddenly, you were “just a director” on a “Thalberg production.” Don’t you see? A role had been created in the world. Just as there used to be no conductor of symphonies.

Belief conducts the symphony of our thoughts. While moments dance to that symphony. Want better moments? Choose to be a better conductor.

A symphony is built not just by the composer, the conductor, and the musicians, but by the audience. The wartime audience heard the approach of the German Wehrmacht. A more recent post-Soviet audience wants to hear the cruel antics of Stalin and believe that Shostakovich was speaking in code.

The mind is an orchestra, the heart is a conductor, and the soul is a symphony.

Your life is a symphony; you are BOTH the composer and the conductor. Make it a masterpiece.

No conductor of any symphony orchestra requires more sensitivity, more powers of observation, more finely tuned instincts, more passionate desires for perfection than the great classic racehorse trainer.

Toscanini was one of the greatest orchestral conductors in the world. Once when he was talking to an orchestra when he was preparing to play one of Beethoven’s symphonies with them he said: “Gentlemen, I am nothing; you are nothing; Beethoven is everything.” He knew well that his duty was not to draw attention to himself or to his orchestra but to obliterate himself and his orchestra and let Beethoven flow through.” Live your life ful y for Jesus; you are but a tool for His service, a reflection in the mirror of Christ. YouTube “Chris Tomlin Jesus

When he was conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Artur Rodzinski said: “In our orchestra we have many nationalities, types, and temperaments. We have learned to forget individual likes, dislikes, and differences of temperament for the sake of music to which we have dedicated our lives. I often wonder if we could not solve the world’s problems on a similar basis of harmony.” “Think what a single individual in a symphony orchestra can accomplish,” the famous maestro continued, “by giving up his individual traits and ambitions in the service of music…. Suppose that in life you had the same all-embracing love for the whole of mankind and for your neighbor in particular. 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.

The ultimate space-measurer in Dutch football is of course, Johan Cruyff. He was only seventeen when he first played at Ajax, yet even then he delivered running commentaries on the use of space to the rest of the team, telling them where to run, where not to run. Players did what the tiny, skinny teenager told them to do because he was right. Cruyff didn't talk about abstract space but about specific, detailed spatial relations on the field. Indeed, the most abiding image of him as a player is not of him scoring or running or tackling. It is of Cruyff pointing. 'No, not there, back a little... forward two metres... four metres more to the left.' He seemed like a conductor directing a symphony orchestra. It was as if Cruyff was helping his colleagues to realize an approximate rendering on the field to match the sublime vision in his mind of how the space ought to be ordered.

As the young husband and wife lay in each other’s arms, each contemplating past, present, and future, Clint recognized the music as the adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s fifth symphony. It was one of the most famous movements in the entire symphonic repertoire, but it was also one of the most debated. Mahler ostensibly composed the adagietto as a love song to his wife, Alma, but when played at the much slower tempo preferred by many conductors, the music instead evokes a feeling of profound melancholy. After almost eighty years, musicologists and aficionados still couldn’t agree whether the music was supposed to be happy or sad, whether it was an expression of intense love and devotion or of unmitigated despair. Clint was struck by the irony that this music would be playing at this moment in his life, and his mouth curled into an ambivalent smile. Was he happy? Was he sad? Would he ever again be certain?

Some officers seem to love having all the answers and micromanaging everyone around them. This may give them a sense of power, or perhaps it is a matter of feeding the ego. However, observe that the conductor of a symphony orchestra doesn’t play all the instruments but enables others to work together to perform a great selection of music. We too need many others to play their parts for the ministry of the Army to be successful.

When the conductor Simon Rattle left the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to take over the Berlin Philharmonic in 2001, he was released from the usual circumspection incumbent upon those in receipt of Arts Council funds: ‘Shame on the Arts Council for knowing so little, for being such amateurs, for simply turning up with a different group of people every few years with no expertise, no knowledge of history, to whom you have to explain everything, where it came from and why it is there, who don’t listen and who don’t care. Shame on them!’35

heartful.   PR: You really did it. Music is an amazing art, to me. I love to recount to myself the number of human beings it takes, each skilled in a different area, to make possible a symphony concert. The composers, and those who copied and preserved the compositions, the instrument makers, skilled at their crafts—tubas, trumpets, timpani, woodwinds, strings—the music teachers who taught the performers, the performers who studied their instruments and practiced and rehearsed, all the builders who erected the concert hall—carpenters, electricians, etc.—the architect who designed it, the conductor who studied, who learned the language of music, the languages of all the instruments, the members of the audience who bought tickets, got dressed, came to the concert hall to be transported, to be informed, by sound, came for an experience that had nothing to do with physical survival. Most amazing. Always makes me certain absolutely without doubt that something is going on with the human species, something good. Two heroes to me are my middle school music teacher and my son’s middle school music teacher. What courage! All those twelve- and thirteen-year-old children, each with a noise-making instrument in his hands and these two enormously courageous teachers are attempting to teach them how to make music together. At my son’s first sixthgrade band concert, the music teacher turned to the audience of glowing, proud parents and said, “I’m not certain what’s going to happen here, but I’m just hoping that we’ll all begin at the same time.” It brought tears to my eyes, literally. And they did it! One step forward, in my opinion, in understanding what it means to be human.

For whom does a troubled mind quell, if not oneself; conductor of the very symphony of thoughts in which we find ourselves entangled?

In the symphonic world, musically inclined industrialists and financiers were having problems of a different sort with the New York Philharmonic. The old German cooperative presented only half a dozen concerts each year. As the orchestra couldn’t guarantee members full time work, they spent most of their time playing at balls and dances; hence their performances were less than highly polished, though much improved after Theodore Thomas was taken on as conductor. Neither their less than professional standards nor traditional repertoire bothered old-fashioned elites, but both failed to satisfy new tycoons. A capitalist combine including Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie underwrote a rival, the New York Symphony Orchestra (1878), another Leopold Damrosch project. Orchestra war ensued. In one notable sally Damrosch stole the American premiere of Brahms’s First Symphony from under Thomas’s nose.

Here’s a charming tale about Bruckner that I love, though I believe it must be apocryphal. When he conducted the premiere of this same third symphony, the audience abhorred it. Personally, I can’t imagine why. Not only is it beautiful, but if it has a flaw, it may be that it’s a little melodramatic and kitschy, two attributes that audiences tend to love. But who can account for tastes? The audience booed violently and stormed out of the hall. I imagine the composer looking back in abject sorrow at the honeycomb of heads in the theater before exiting and locking himself in the conductor’s room, alone as he would always be. Forlorn and forsaken, Bruckner remained by himself until everyone had left the building, at which point he returned to the pit for a last farewell. He saw a young man still sitting in his seat, a young composer so overcome that he’d been unable to move a muscle since the symphony began, not a twitch. The young Mahler had been cemented in his seat

The vagus nerve is the conductor of the human body symphony orchestra.

We are in a giant conscious symphony; where every note is a character, and every musician is a soul... Unfortunately some people are so busy with reading the sheet music; they've ignored the conductor.

Just as a skilled conductor orchestrates a symphony, so must we harmonize our tasks and aspirations to create a masterpiece of productivity and fulfillment.” -Benjamin Franklin

Your brain is simply a part of the overall system; at times, it is a conductor of a symphony but not the composer. There’s plenty of science to indicate that the gastrointestinal tract (called the enteric nervous system) populated with billions of bacteria have just as much an influence on emotions and decision making as our brain. It’s even been referred to as our second brain.15 What’s even stranger to ponder is that those bacteria are part of our biology without being created by our body. They play an essential role in our health, behavior and functioning as an organism and our bodies simply couldn’t live without them.

Mastering this trinity of influence is akin to an orchestra conductor leading a symphony, where the harmonious interaction of disparate components creates a resonant impact that far exceeds the sum of its parts.

Listen up, mind maestro! It's time to fine-tune those thoughts, remix them if you need to, and hit that "delete" button on that pesky ego track. We're the conductors of this epic symphony, and we're going to make sure our mind orchestra plays tunes of brilliance, wit, and wisdom.

There are no experts who hold all of the answers. But there is a conductor named Jesus and a global symphony of people of every age and life stage tuning up their instruments. If you stop right now, you can hear it. All it takes are kids willing to stop talking and listen.

We are instantly creating the human symphony, and it is being played everywhere in a concert of gods. In this extraordinary event we are the composer, the musician, the conductor, and the audience. It is important, therefore, to know the score.

We need an orchestrated, “positive liberty” world. We need geniuses to compose the symphonies, inspiring conductors to lead the orchestra, brilliant musicians for each instrument, singers able to execute fantastic harmonies, audiences capable of appreciating the highest quality and being transported out of themselves and spurred on to achieve great things themselves.

Though you may think of yourself as the conductor of the orchestra that is your life, you are more like the orchestra itself, a myriad of musicians coming together to create a single symphony.

While cortex grabs the lion’s share of headlines, other structures may also play an important role in the expression of consciousness. Francis Crick was fascinated, literally to his dying day, with a mysterious thin layer of neurons underneath the cortex called the claustrum. Claustrum neurons project to every region of cortex and also receive input from every cortical region. Crick and I speculated that the claustrum acts as the conductor of the cortical symphony, coordinating responses across the cortical sheet in a way that is essential to any conscious experience. Laborious but stunning reconstructions of the axonal wiring of individual nerve cells (which I call “crown of thorns” neurons) from the claustrum of the mouse confirm that these cells project massively throughout much of the cortical mantle.25

He may not have the powers of Superman, but he is such a powerful man. He has a strong sense of discernment and allows God to guide his steps. He orchestrates symphonies of greatness. He is not only a powerful man but also a conductor of great influence.