Normally, things are viewed in these little segmented boxes. There's classical, and then there's jazz; romantic, and then there's baroque. I find that very dissatisfying. I was trying to find the thread that connects one type of music - one type of musician - to another, and to follow that thread in some kind of natural, evolutionary way.
I think, you know, for someone who does play, let's say, old music or, you know, Baroque music or Renaissance music - and you know, and I do play a lot of that, obviously - engaging with new composers, engaging with young composers, is really exciting because it makes me look at people of the past in a very different way that they are also living, that there was a lot of subjectivity in the decisions that they were making.
I was attracted by the curve — the liberated, sensual curve suggested by the possibilities of new technology yet so often recalled in venerable old baroque churches.
Religion is in every aspect of art, when it's not baroque.
Some people go to Berlin to get more cutting edge; I went and started wearing lederhosen and going to visit baroque palaces.
My look is either very baroque or very Zen – everything in between makes me itch.
My thesis statement would be—Bach didn't write Baroque music. He wrote great music.
I think Ive learned more about Baroque music than any other genre.
I'm not a designer who is very interested in baroque or in fantasy or in the fantastic side of fashion. This exists and this is important, but I'm interested in the very real dimensions.
Has it struck you that the music which is regarded as the most sublime in western civilization, which is the music of Bach, is called baroque?
For my own singing, I used to be attracted by the baroque, the flashier the better, but now I prefer a simpler, purer style.
Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.
Kitsch is the contemporary form of the Gothic, Rococo, Baroque.
I had the right amount of detachment to go back and really appreciate what I had grown up with. There’s a particular style that is very Peru that you don’t see anywhere else; it’s got so many different imprints. When you mix Incan minimalism with the heavy, ornate Spanish Baroque, it is very interesting.
So a lot of what you see in the Baroque Cycle is me wanting to be one of those guys. In the case of Anathem, I needed something that was more formal, less flashy, as if it had been translated from the classical language of another planet, but enlivened with slang terms that a teenage narrator would enjoy throwing around.
To have that powder blown up your nose is rather like being shot out of a rifle barrel lined with Baroque paintings and landing on a sea of electricity.
