Words matter. These are the best Eric Whitacre Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I don’t know if it is a spiritual, physiological or psychological phenomenon, but I believe now more than ever that singing is a universal, built-in mechanism designed to cultivate empathy and compassion.
For the first six or eight months at Juilliard I felt paralysed. I didn’t know what I was doing.
Since I first fell in love with choral music when I was 18 and began composing at 21, I’ve been listening to these recordings of British choirs. I just fell in love with that sound – that pure, clean, pristine sound – and I think it’s probably been the biggest influence on my sound.
The virtual choir would never replace live music or a real choir, but the same sort of focus and intent and esprit de corps is evident in both, and at the end of the day it seems to me a genuine artistic expression.
I write music that sounds complex but isn’t. I frankly never think in terms of theory.
I wanted to be a rock star. I dreamed of it, and that’s all I dreamed of. To be more accurate, I wanted to be a pop star. This was in the late ’80s. And mostly, I wanted to be the fifth member of Depeche Mode or Duran Duran.
I happen to be one of the people who believe that the Internet is a force of good, and I’m very optimistic about it.
A really good poem is full of music.
Many composers use software to write music – programs like Finale or Sibelius. There are also recording programs. I should say I’m still very old-fashioned, I still use pencil and paper. But almost every composer I know does it the ‘new way.’
I’m a self-confessed geek, and my whole concept of music at first was entirely electronic. In many ways, it turned out to be an advantage. I was so green, so utterly naive about the nature of classical music, that I did things that made me look totally, deliberately unorthodox.
There must be four or five hundred choirs here in London alone. In a way, there’s nowhere else on Earth I could go and get this level and passion for singing in the one place.
When I had my first experiences of choral singing, the dissonance of those close harmonies was so exquisite that I would giggle or I would tear up, and I felt it in a physical way.
I can’t write music unless I’m deeply connected to it and that connection almost always comes from some experience that I have had or am having.
When I went to college at the University of Nevada back in Las Vegas, I got tricked into singing in choir. The first thing we did was the Mozart ‘Requiem.’ That was the piece that changed my life overnight.
I don’t feel like I’m an artist with a capital ‘A.’
