Bach Quotes

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

I see it as my job to try to keep Bach in the mainstream and present his music with, rather than without, its emotional core.

That's why it's called Sebastian Bach. I mean, it's a permanent band, pretty much, but if I jam with other people, it just makes a better album, I think.

Yes, I mean like you know, having studied with Yehudi Menuhin that is like some direct route into Bach, because he was one of the foremost interpreters of Bach for the violin.

Some months ago, while I was preparing a new work, I told a young cinema executive my intention of including in a soundtrack two themes from Bach. But when he asked me which has been the last hit from that Bach?, then I knew that I had no longer place in cinema.

I would rather play Chiquita Banana and have my swimming pool than play Bach and starve.

I was born out of due time in the sense that by temperament and talent I should have been more suited for the life of a small Bach, living in anonymity and composing regularly for an established service and for God.

But it wasn't just a technical approach towards the piano, studying the music for this film was also a way of approaching the soul of the film, because the film is really about the soul of Schubert and the soul of Bach.

I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony.

Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure. I am sure, however, that en famille they play Mozart.

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?

When you are accompanying someone, you are listening to them the way you listen to a Bach Chorale, where four parts are going on at the same time, all of which are gorgeous melodies, all being played simultaneously.

Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all.

If you try to have a fashion show with Bach fugues and John Coltrane, it doesn't really work.

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.

Maybe it's egocentric or whatever, but when I'm playing Beethoven, Bach, Hendrix, or whoever it is, in the end, it just feels like my own music and I'm making it up as I'm going along.

Any species capable of producing, at this earliest, juvenile stage of its development... the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, cannot be all bad.

Bach was a top harmonist geezer, which is why the jazz cats love him.

I made sure no butt cheek hung out. You know, the original Daisy, Catherine Bach's shorts were shorter than mine.

The fact that Stravinsky used the classics as a major influence is obvious. What is interesting is how he used them, how he turned Bach into Stravinsky.

Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.

There is nothing like a Bach fugue to remove me from a discordant moment... only Bach hold up fresh and strong after repeated playing. I can always return to Bach when the other records weary me.

Almost everything The Beatles did was great, and it's hard to improve on. They were our Bach. The way to get around it may be to keep it as simple as possible.

Bach and Beethoven, all of them, they had to write something to please the upper structure, those with money and power.

I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.

Artists like Bach and Beethoven erected churches and temples on the heights. I only wanted... to build dwellings for men in which they might feel happy and at home.

I used to love Bach.

Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian.

I think Bach is equally a romantic composer because he laid the seeds harmonically for people like Chopin and the great Romantics, Brahms, so it's difficult to you know all this like labelling and putting - I think Bach is attractive to musicians because he supersedes the labels.

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.