Michael Tippett Quotes & Sayings

“I am quite certain in my heart of hearts that modern music and modern art is not a conspiracy, but is a form of truth and integrity for those who practise it honestly, decently and with all their being.”

“Music is a performance and needs the audience.”

“Nature has different times.”

“Music remains the most strange of the materials because we don't understand what happens when music moves you.”

“The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time.”

“Music is a performing art, as any Native American will tell you. It isn't there in the score.”

“My true function within a society which embraces all of us is to continue an age-old tradition. This tradition is to create images from the depths of the imagination and to give them form, whether visual, intellectual or musical.”

“I think we're all pretty odd.”

“Beethoven suppressed everything, his personal life disappeared until he was locked inside. That is a figure quite extreme.”

“Characters are an extreme form in Shakespeare's theater.”