Sondheim on audiences

“I do think audiences become more sophisticated. You try something out on them and they say, “Ugh”. You try it a second time and they say, “Oh”. You try it a third time and they say, “Ooh”. You try it a fourth time and they say, “Oh, that’s awfully old hat.”’ He laughs. ‘That’s the history of art, is it not?’”

Brown, Mick. “Still Cutting it at 80: Stephen Sondheim interview”, Telegraph, 27 September 2010.  Click here to view article.

Posted

in

,

by

Greg

Tags:

,

Featured Content

Borge on Borodin
"My favorite Russian composer is Borodin, mainly because he had the shortest name. Except for Cui, who was just showing off. […] Cui wrote an opera called A Feast in Time of Plague. Shows you what kind of guy HE was." (Victor Borge, My Favorite Intermissions, New York, 1971, p133)  
Musicians’ response to violence
This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.  — Leonard Bernstein, 25 November 1963 Christopher Buchenholz, “An Artist’s Response to Violence”, Leonard Bernard Office, https://leonardbernstein.com/about/humanitarian/an-artists-response-to-violence. Accessed 18 March 2022.
Vassily Primakov on the role of the arts
“[Art] certainly takes us some place unobtainable. We can go on to say that it enriches our lives – as it has my own. There are many classical musicians I’ve met who are, in my opinion, snobs. They are only involved in certain types of music, seeing nothing beyond ‘classical music’. I think this is […]
Speed (2)
Go to more crosswords
Real genius
“Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.” Simone Wells, French philosopher and mystic. Cited at QuotationsBook
The delicate nature of Chopin’s pianism
Chopin gave a recital in the Gentlemen”s Concert Hall, Manchester, on 28 August 1848. The audience of 1,200 people was the largest Chopin had ever performed to, but Chopin’s delicate playing was not really suited to such a large venue. Conscious of this fact, Chopin requested that another pianist, George Osborne, who was also performing […]
Articles, papers, program notes
ARTICLES & PAPERS: PROGRAM NOTES:
Practising at every opportunity
The conductor Stokowski was co-conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.  He was rehearsing his own orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  The orchestra, however, was used to playing Ravel’s exuberant orchestration. Charles O’Connell recalled: “In the midst of the rehearsal, one of the second violinists busied himself practising the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, which […]
Dress regulations for Handel’s Messiah
In the eighteenth century, hooped skirts were a popular choice of ladies dress attire as they enabled a dramatic entrance, and also flattered the figure when pregnant. They did take up considerable space though. For the performance of the Messiah Handel instructed the ladies to come without hooped skirts, and gentlemen without their swords. The […]
An artist’s job is not for small talk
Nora Guthrie, Woody's daughter, once told me a story about a reception she was at where Bob Dylan was in attendance. The business people there were quietly commenting on how unsociable Dylan seemed to them, not what they imagined an encounter with Dylan would be like. When that observation about Dylan's behavior and disposition were […]