These orchestra quotes will inspire you. Orchestra is a group of musicians who play together on a variety of instruments, which usually come from all four instrument families.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging orchestra quotes, orchestra sayings, and orchestra proverbs.
Famous Orchestra Quotes
- “You can’t play a symphony alone, it takes an orchestra to play it.” ~ Navjot Singh Sidhu
- “With an orchestra, you are building citizens, better citizens for the community.” ~ Gustavo Dudamel
- “The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.” ~ Benjamin Zander
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“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” ~ Halford Luccock
- “For better or worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.” ~ Dale Carnegie
- “There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn’t give a damn what goes on in between.” ~ Thomas Beecham
- “We are members of a vast cosmic orchestra, in which each living instrument is essential to the complementary and harmonious playing of the whole.” ~ J. Boone
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“A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.” ~ Max Lucado
- “The role of an orchestra in the 21st century isn’t just playing, it’s about developing future audiences and performers.” ~ Leonard Slatkin
- “Have you seen a symphony orchestra? There is a person at the back carrying a triangle. Now and again the conductor will point to him or her and that person will play “ting.” That might seem so insignificant, but in the conception of the composer something irreplaceable would be lost to the total beauty of the symphony if that “ting” did not happen.” ~ Desmond Tutu
- “If I do not practice one day; I know it. If I do not practice the next, the orchestra knows it; if I do not practice the third day, the whole world knows it.” ~ Ignacy Jan Paderewski
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“In order to lead the orchestra, you must first turn your back to the crowd.” ~ Mike Mentzer
- “The art of conducting consists in knowing when to stop conducting to let the orchestra play.” ~ Herbert von Karajan
- “It can and will be a more powerful sound but the orchestra has far more potential for expressive power. When I hear a great rock band it can make me feel alive, but when I hear a great orchestra it can make me feel human.” ~ Glenn Branca
- “You can find the whole world of a film in one instrument, or you can find a world of sound in the orchestra.” ~ Howard Shore
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“To me, the piano in itself is an orchestra.” ~ Cecil Taylor
- “In the great orchestra we call life, you have an instrument and a song, and you owe it to God to play them both sublimely.” ~ Max Lucado
- “I always maintain that playing in an orchestra intelligently is the best school for democracy. If you play a solo, the conductor and everybody in the orchestra follows you. Then, a few bars later, the main voice goes to another instrument, another group, and then you have to go back into the collective [sound]. The art of playing in an orchestra is being able to express yourself to the maximum but always in relation to something else that is going on.” ~ Daniel Barenboim
- “How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?” ~ Desmond Tutu
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“It is not together, but the ensemble is perfect.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “I think it’s a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra – especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music.” ~ Gustavo Dudamel
- “I’m not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.” ~ Leonard Bernstein
- “I sometimes like to think of God as a great symphony and the various spiritual paths as instruments in an orchestra. The gift that you have is like music waiting to be played. You need only to find the instrument that will best bring it out. You alone can never play all the instruments, and your music might not find voice in all the instruments. All you can do is find the instrument that suits you best, play it as well as you can, and add your music to the great symphony of divine creation.” ~ Kent Nerburn
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“I don’t mean to make you nervous, but unfortunately I have to.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “Get the most out of everything in your life; the happiness and the sadness, the success and the failure…get a good perspective of what life is all about. Let the orchestra of your life play all the notes, the high notes, the low rumblings of the difficulties and perplexities that all we all face.” ~ Jim Rohn
- “God comes to us in theater in the way we communicate with each other, whether it be a symphony orchestra, or a wonderful ballet, or a beautiful painting, or a play. It’s a way of expressing our humanity.” ~ Julie Harris
- “Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.” ~ George Szell
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“A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.” ~ Glenn Miller
- “Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is.” ~ Mae West
- “Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. Hear the music of voices, the song of birds, the mighty strains of an orchestra as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow . . . Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Glory in all the facts of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you.” ~ Helen Keller
- “Orchestra: So you haven’t got a drum, just beat your belly. So I haven’t got a horn-I’ll play my nose. So we haven’t any cymbals- We’ll just slap our hands together, And though there may be orchestras That sound a little better With their fancy shiny instruments That cost an awful lot- Hey, we’re making music twice as good By playing what we’ve got!” ~ Shel Silverstein
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“I cannot give it to you, so try to watch me.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “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
- “Deep inside I feel that this world we live in is really a big, huge, monumental symphonic orchestra. I believe that in its primordial form, all of creation is sound and that it’s not just random sound, that it’s music.” ~ Michael Jackson
- “My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.” ~ Fernando Pessoa
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“Accelerando means in tempo. Don’t rush.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “An orchestra knows during the first two minutes of the first rehearsal whether or not they are going to enjoy the person on the podium.” ~ Leonard Slatkin
- “We are all musicians in a great human orchestra, and it is now time to play the Save the World Symphony. You are not required to play a solo, but you are required to know what instrument you hold and play it as well as you can. You are required to find your place in the score. What we love we must protect. That’s what love means. From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act.” ~ Sandra Steingraber
- “You probably think of the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instruments
producing a confused agreeable mass
of sound. You do not listen for details because you have never trained your ears to listen to details.” ~ Arnold Bennett -
“He was listening so I don’t remember.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “I have often said to the orchestra, especially to the younger players, ‘Do your best, and love what you are doing, because you are allowed to do this thing.’ By this I mean, they can do what millions of people cannot do. Many people cannot think of playing music or listening to it until six o’clock in the evening. To be involved professionally in a thing as creative as this is a great privilege and we have a duty to make it in such a way that we can help bring pleasure and a sense of fulfillment to those who are not so fortunate.” ~ Herbert von Karajan
- “Every orchestra I know, every opera house I know, is desperately looking around trying to find new talent, new composing talent, supporting young composers, supporting new ideas, supporting new ways of getting the message across.” ~ Esa-Pekka Salonen
- “When I first wrote for orchestra, I didn’t realize, when you have 20 people playing a violin line, that is very different than one person playing that line.” ~ David Del Tredici
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“It’s difficult to remember when you haven’t played it before.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “My intention always has been to arrive at human contact without enforcing authority. A musician, after all, is not a mili- tary officer. What matters most is human contact. The great mys- tery of music making requires real friendship among those who work together. Every member of the orchestra knows I am with him and her in my heart.” ~ Carlo Maria Giulini
- “You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.” ~ Dale Carnegie
- “It’s been a thrilling journey – I have had to really learn that an orchestra is an entity – it’s a creature. I have been calling it the dragon and the conductor is the dragon tamer. And you just have to … ride and don’t let go and you will be fine.” ~ Tori Amos
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“I am thinking it right but beating it wrong.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice.” ~ Andres Segovia
- “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
- “Why do you always start after my beat then rush to catch up? Do you want us to stay behind?” ~ Eugene Ormandy
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“The Chicago Symphony is considered the greatest orchestra in the world.” ~ Jane Byrne
- “Let me explain what I do here. I don’t want to confuse you any more than absolutely necessary.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “You know, in some ways conducting is counter-intuitive. It’s like winter driving in Finland – if you skid, the natural reaction is to fight with the wheel and jam on the brakes, which is the quickest way to get killed. What you have to do is let go, and the car will right itself. It’s the same when an orchestra loses its ensemble. You have to resist the temptation to semaphore, and let the orchestra find its own way back to the pulse.” ~ Esa-Pekka Salonen
- “There are three orchestras in Munich, all world-quality, in a city of one million. Yet every hall is full.” ~ Zubin Mehta
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“Something went wrong. It was correct when I studied it.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “From early on, when synthesizers were first introduced into music, I liked the idea that you could get a big sound with them – electronic, but like an orchestra. And I could play it all myself. That was exciting.” ~ John Carpenter
- “[As a kid] I felt it was really weird that music schools behaved like a conveyor belt to make performers for those symphony orchestras. If you were really good and practiced your violin for a few hours a day for ten years you might be invited to this VIP elite club. For me music was not about that. It is about freedom and expression and individuality and impulsiveness and spontaneity. It wasn’t so Apollonian; it was more Dionysian.” ~ Bjork
- “Muti is going to do the Alpine Symphony this year. He will do it well because it is not very well known.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
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“We have to play it longer because there are no numbers or letters.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “I don’t get into politics, general or musical, but just call me if you get jury duty. Even in New Jersey I was able to help somebody.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “I can see none of you are smugglers; that’s why it’s so loud.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
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“Watch me closely – only one can spoil it.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “There was confusion since I stood here 35 years ago.” ~ Eugene Ormandy
- “The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. Always an orchestra, and just as music traverses walls, so sensuality traverses the body and reaches up to ecstasy.” ~ Anais Nin
