Top Jennifer Higdon Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Jennifer Higdon Biography

Jennifer Higdon (born December 31, 1962) is an American composer of classical music and composition teacher. She has received many awards including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto and two Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Classical Composition - the first in 2009 for her Percussion Concerto, the second in 2018 for her Viola Concerto. The latter was on an album of her music, Higdon: All Things Majestic, Viola Concerto, and Oboe Concerto, that won the 2018 Grammy for Best Classical Compendium.

Read about Jennifer Higdon in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Jennifer Higdon Quotes

My pieces usually are programmed on concerts in which the other works are standard repertoire. My music always sounds very different when it's on a concert of all contemporary music. It always seems to stick out at an odd angle. This also makes me think of a question I sometimes debate with my friends: does the music of a composer directly reflect that composer's personality? This is a difficult one, but I think it usually does.

Different, Music, Odd, Personality, Reflect, Thinking

You don't need any specialized education and you don't need to know anything about the world in which I work. I think my music should be able to speak to you even if you've never been to a concert of classical music before.

Classical, Education, Music, Speak, Thinking, World

When we even use the term 'specialized world,' we already have a problem! We're making art; they are making art. . . these worlds are not far apart from each other. For instance, pieces of art that hang on a wall can be seen in museums or can be used in a variety of commercial ways. That art is everywhere, so the message is that it's a part of everyday life.

Apart, Art, Everyday, Making, Term, Wall

When anyone is creating anything, it has no choice but to be in that stream. The art I create and the art my colleagues create is part of it. But the question is: how long will it last in the stream? I think of it really as an enormous river, with its shores very distant from each other, and only time will tell what's going to last in the end. It seems to me that all music of our time is connected, but I never think about where I am in the river or how I would be placed by others inside of it.

Art, Colleagues, Long, Music, Thinking

I know that my music is heard a lot in commercial circles. In academia, I think my music is taken in differently but I'm not sure why that is. Some kind of sixth sense tells me that people in that world are thinking differently about it. I don't know if it has to do with the structure of my music, which is probably more apparent to those in the academic world than it is in the commercial world, where people tend not to think of that aspect of music so much. They just listen for pure enjoyment.

Academic, Kind, People, Taken, Thinking

In fact, if you take any group of scores, it's likely that fifty to sixty percent are going to be so much alike that it's difficult to tell any difference among them. But I sometimes wonder if that has more to do with the quality of the art that's being made. There are always those composers who are going to move toward whatever is currently in fashion, there are others who will deliberately attempt to go in another direction. And sometimes, there are composers who will see themselves as being outside the stream and not even try to present their music to the general public.

Alike, Art, Attempt, Fashion, Moving

As a consequence, I think of the idea of 'common practice' at any time as something that can only be seen by looking backwards. Maybe around the turn of the 20th century there might have been some kind of common practice but now it looks to me like the boundaries have come down.

20Th, Common, Down, Kind, Looking, Thinking

We're living in a time when pretty much anything can happen in the music world. There are a lot of musical languages in which people work. When I think of common practice I think back to the time I was studying the flute, where I learned that in the Baroque period many things were not notated, since they were understood - that was because of common practice.

Happen, Musical, People, Thinking, Work, World

I always tell people that my music should speak to them. . . and that they shouldn't feel obligated to say why or how. All reactions are valid; the important thing is to have the experience.

People, Important, Speak, Thing, Say

Sandi Toksvig

Sandi Toksvig

Edmund Husserl

Edmund Husserl

Lindy Boggs

Lindy Boggs

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

David X. Cohen

David X. Cohen

Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott

John Pizzarelli

John Pizzarelli

Graham Russell

Graham Russell

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer

Donald Petersen

Donald Petersen

Nick Lowe

Nick Lowe

Ron "Pigpen" McKernan

Ron "Pigpen" McKernan