Carlisle Floyd Quotes

32 quotes in 528 categories

• I had all the normal interests - I played basketball and I headed the school paper. But I also developed very early a great love…
• I was trying to do something that seemed very natural and easy but which bridged that gulf between the singing voice and the speaking voice.
• I think anything that is expressed directly and as honestly as possible will last.
• It seems to me opera is just as relevant as an expressive art as anything else.
• It's amazing how fast generations lose sight of other generations. One of the first things the young composers who come to work with me say…
• It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to…
• Like any other composer of opera, I choose a subject not for polemical reasons, but because it contains vivid characters in highly charged dramatic situations.
• Most of the important composers in our country are clustered in the Northeast.
• Socially I never was an outsider. I have never thought of the conflict element before frankly, but perhaps it was wanting to belong, and at…
• Our most intimate contact with civilizations long since dust has been through the art which has survived them.
• People in very high places suddenly fall, and we are always surprised because we don't factor in the basic element that they're humans and, therefore,…
• The artist is something of an outsider in America. I have always felt that America does not value its artists, certainly not in the sense…
• The story of Willie Stark fascinated me because it was tackling the story of a man who outwardly has all the success one could possibly…
• The performances of my works in the last 10 years are probably equal to all the previous years put together. There are so many venues…
• I've never set out consciously to write American music. I don't know what that would be unless the obvious Appalachian folk references.
• Anyone who creates something new or does something different artistically is going to be singled out.
• I found a certain kind of music congenial to me; it never occurred to me to write music that was academically acceptable.
• What is American music? The most satisfying answer I've come across is that it was a kind of natural comfort with the vernacular which is…
• If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it.
• There is something inherent in our democracy that tends to want to level. America is a little uncomfortable in the presence of someone who is…

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