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"Anyone who draws attention to himself as an individual, is viewed with suspicion. We acquired this tendency, of course, from America, and we must resist it: levelling, and imitation of what others are already doing."
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"America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumberable editions of The Lamplighter (by Maria Susanna Cummins), and other books neither better nor worse? Worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the hundred thousand."
"America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there."
"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected."
"If you take any populated place - any major city in America - and drive 45 minutes from that spot directly out of town you'll be in about as country a place as you'll ever find."
"They take pride in their schools. They begin to participate, where, when they are renters, they don't do that. So what we're doing by this program is strengthening America."
Explore more quotes by Dietrich Fischer Dieskau
"What concerns me, is the general social tendency to enforce a level, above which nothing rises and stands out."
"And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away."
"Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts."
"Unfortunately, it happens all too seldom that you really disappear behind a work, that you are no longer audible as an interpreter."
"The composition of a single melody is born out of a bit of text, perhaps the first line, but it can also be the entire strophe; it can even be the poem's overall form."
"When you go out onto the stage, all the preparation has to be forced into your subconscious. For the moment of the performance, we all have to return to a new level of unconsciousness. All the reflection and all the doubts have to be laid aside before you start."
"In fact, the element of play has an important role in my life, and I think that should be the case in the life of every artist. Our life is occupied with playing, whether we play an instrument or a role."
"You can't do opera when already from the 10th row you can only see little dolls on the stage. In such an enormous space you can't put much faith in the personal presence of the individual singer, which is reflected in facial expressions, among other things."
"Within each individual young person you meet, you have the same fields to plow. The trick is just to wake thmem up, to sharpen their ears for what's already there in the music."
"If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief."
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