One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear.
When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that the mastery of classical composers involved not just perfection, but also creativity and spontaneity.
Dave Brubeck highlights the notion that when listening to the music of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, one perceives their technical perfection. However, he reminds us that these composers were also great improvisers, suggesting that their genius stemmed from a blend of both meticulous craftsmanship and creative freedom, which together contribute to the beauty and depth of their works.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about creativity in music, you might say, 'As Dave Brubeck observed, the great improvisers like Bach and Mozart remind us that perfection in art requires spontaneity.'
More from Dave Brubeck
All quotes →I knew even if I'm a cowboy, I'm going to be involved in jazz in some way.
What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.
Many people don't understand how disciplined you have to be to play jazz... And that is really the idea of democracy - freedom within the Constitution or discipline. You don't just get out there and do anything you want.
I’m beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.
I got a poster from Columbia Records, and there's Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Ellington, Count Basie - everybody in that poster has died, I'm the only one left. And great players like Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, it's hard to believe they're gone because we were all so close. But I believe in the future and the tradition will go on.
Similar quotes
The last time I saw her was red. The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring. In some places, it was burned. There were black crumbs, and pepper, streaked across the redness.
So that I saw music as a way of documenting realities from the urban cities of Latin America.
Hollywood wants to own everything. I don't want to own anything. I don't want people just to make content, I want to empower and teach them to create content they own that they can exploit in any medium.
We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on broken locks, our voiceprints in bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete.
Once in awhile, there's stuff that makes me say, That's what theatre's about. It has to be a human event on the stage, and that doesn't happen very often.
The frightening thought that what you draw may become a building makes for reasoned lines.