Quotes by Carlisle Floyd

Carlisle Floyd

American opera composer

Category: Music | Politics

Quotes 1 till 20 of 21.

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  • America tends to worship the modest talent because it doesn't put us in an uncomfortable position vis-a-vis the artist.
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  • Anyone who creates something new or does something different artistically is going to be singled out.
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  • If something is successful with the audience, it's automatically suspect; the reverse is to say that not to reach audiences is the greatest compliment an artist can receive!
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  • It seems to me opera is just as relevant as an expressive art as anything else.
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  • 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 is that they want to write music people will like, instead of gaining their credentials by being rejected by the audience.
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  • 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 forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story.
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  • 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.
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  • Most of the important composers in our country are clustered in the Northeast.
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  • Our most intimate contact with civilizations long since dust has been through the art which has survived them.
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  • 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, they are flawed and have weaknesses.
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  • 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 the same time wanting to retain one's own personality.
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  • 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 that the Europeans do.
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  • 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 now and there is a completely new public for opera that's grown up outside of the traditional core opera public.
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  • 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 want and who is destroyed by his personal demons.
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  • 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 distinctly superior in whatever way.
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  • There's the Bacon society, which is fostered by his fourth wife Helen Bacon, but I don't know what kind of performances his music gets. He wrote symphonic music and some chorale music.
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  • We don't have access to a national forum that we had in those days, through the news magazines which were the television news of the time. It's very disturbing to me that we've sort of been pushed to the corners.
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  • We think the Puritans always dressed in black and white, which they didn't. They loved very bright colors. And there were other differences in perceptions that gave one a very different view of them.
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  • 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 diverse and regional; it's not one particular set of sounds.
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  • When I've seen my operas in Europe, they have always struck me as more American than when I hear them here. I can't tell you what that phenomenon is.
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Questions and Answers

What are the most famous quotes from Carlisle Floyd?

The two most famous quotes from Carlisle Floyd are:

  • "America tends to worship the modest talent because it doesn't put us in an uncomfortable position vis-a-vis the artist."
  • "Anyone who creates something new or does something different artistically is going to be singled out."