George Crumb Quotes
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Although technical discussions are interesting to composers, I suspect that the truly magical and spiritual powers of music arise from deeper levels of our psyche.
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Perhaps of all the most basic elements of music, rhythm most directly affects our central nervous system.
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Perhaps two million years ago the creatures of a planet in some remote galaxy faced a musical crisis similar to that which we earthly composers face today.
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The advent of electronically synthesized sound after World War II has unquestionably had enormous influence on music in general.
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Unquestionably, our contemporary world of music is far richer, in a sense, than earlier periods, due to the historical and geographical extensions of culture to which I have referred.
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Most of my influences are turn-of-the-century.
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In a broader sense, the rhythms of nature, large and small - the sounds of wind and water, the sounds of birds and insects - must inevitably find their analogues in music.
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The development of new instrumental and vocal idioms has been one of the remarkable phenomena of recent music.
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I think we're in a very low point of music right now.
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I have observed, too, that the people of the many countries that I have visited are showing an ever increasing interest in the classical and traditional music of their own cultures.
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The future will be the child of the past and the present, even if a rebellious child.
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As interesting as that music can occasionally be, I don't think it really replaces the other.
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The retrospective glance is a relatively easy gesture for us to make.
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Writing seems to be more difficult as you move through the years.
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I frequently hear our present period described as uncertain, confused, chaotic.
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If we look at music history closely, it is not difficult to isolate certain elements of great potency which were to nourish the art of music for decades, if not centuries.
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Perhaps many of the perplexing problems of the new music could be put into a new light if we were to reintroduce the ancient idea of music being a reflection of nature.
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I am optimistic about the future of music.
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Nonetheless, I sense that it will be the task of the future to somehow synthesize the sheer diversity of our present resources into a more organic and well-ordered procedure.
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I must confess, my Spanish is not so good - except I read a little, so I started with the English but then determined that it would have to be in Spanish.
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One very important aspect of our contemporary musical culture - some might say the supremely important aspect - is its extension in the historical and geographical senses to a degree unknown in the past.
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This is not a happy time for this kind of music in this country.
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I pick up the New York Times or Time and it's talking about the latest rock group, which I'm sure is exciting to some people, but it neglects a huge area of music.
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I am certain that most composers today would consider today's music to be rich, not to say confusing, in its enormous diversity of styles, technical procedures, and systems of esthetics.