Composers From England

"Dowghter, in this I can thinke no other But that it is true thys proverbe olde, Hastye love is soone hot and soone colde!"

"Rest, weary heart! From all thy silent griefs and secret pain, Thy profitless regrets and longings vain; Wisdom and love have ordered all the past, All shall be blessedness and light at last; Cast off the cares that have so long opprest,— Rest, sweetly rest!"

"Fill it up, about ship wheel it, Close to our lips a brimmer join: Where's the tempest now, who feels it? None — the danger's drown'd in wine."

"One wide water all around us: All above us one black sky; Different deaths at once surround us: Hark! what means that dreadful cry?"

"Cease, rude Boreas, blustering railer! List, ye landsmen, all to me; Messmates, hear a brother sailor Sing the dangers of the sea."

"Rest, weary soul! The penalty is borne, the ransom paid, For all thy sins full satisfaction made; Strive not to do thyself what Christ has done, Claim the free gift, and make the joy thine own. No more by pangs of guilt and fear distrest, Rest, sweetly rest!"

"Over the last five decades, Dave Holland has established himself as one of the most skilled bassists in jazz. As a leader, the English bassist released some excellent forward-thinking recordings, like his 1972 debut, Conference of the Birds, which also featured Anthony Braxton and Sam Rivers, and 1982's Jumpin' In, which featured frequent collaborator, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler."

"Keith Emerson: the man who brought the keyboardist out from behind the organ (and then proceeded to throw said organ about the stage after teaching it a hard lesson involving knives). He (literally!) wrestled with his Hammond, climbed the rafters and showered sparks from the end of his custom Moog ribbon controller. Of course, such histrionics wouldn’t have been worth a hoot if the feller couldn’t play. But play he did. From blistering rock leads to impossibly fast baroque keyboard runs, Emerson has done it all. A surprisingly ballsy rocker, he wasn’t afraid to tone it down. His famous Lucky Man solo is etched into rock and roll history. Perhaps best of all, he dared to drag his monster modular Moog on stage."

"Deep Purple are responsible for an awfully lot of what we would come to know as heavy metal, so it might be surprising to learn that the band’s keyboardist was one of their driving forces. A classically-trained pianist, Lord fused blues, jazz, rock and classical styles to add a bit of sophistication to the bombastic barrages of Deep Purple, Whitesnake and more. He focused on the Hammond C3, though he was equally adept with a Minimoog. An outstanding and often overlooked player."

"Wakeman, it turns out, is prog rock’s class clown. Possessed of a sharp and irreverent wit of which the public has only recently been made aware, his skills on the keys are no laughing matter. [...] Often an object of ridicule for his stage garb of silver capes and flowing locks, he is highly respected for his skill and humour."

"Swapping out the fully competent Tony Kaye for keyboard virtuoso Rick Wakeman put Yes on a completely new level."

"It takes a special kind of musician to stand onstage with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Bonham and hold their own. John Paul Jones is that musician twice over, primarily on bass but also on keys. Jonesy’s Jazz Bass is an integral part of the Led Zeppelin sound, with its thunderous harmonic overtones providing a solid bed for Page to go ham all over while also not getting lost underneath the almighty power of Bonham’s gloriously animalistic drumming style."

"Perhaps the most interesting and undoubtedly impressive aspect of Jones' run is the fact he's essentially had two careers. The first came with Led Zeppelin, where he was arguably the most unheralded member of the legendary rock outfit . When Led Zeppelin disbanded following drummer John Bonham's death, Jones ensured he kept his bass plugged in. Jones, whose professional career began as a technically sound session player capable of playing anything from blues to hard rock, had no trouble making a living while working with the likes of R.E.M, Foo Fighters, and Peter Gabriel in his post-Zeppelin world."

"Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi is without question the greatest metal guitarist of all time. There would simply be no metal without Iommi’s monumental riffs, beastly tone, and more importantly his revolutionary approach to the guitar. [...] Iommi’s sonic brilliance speaks for itself, and the fact the vast majority of the metal scene has remained unwavering in their admiration for him not only cements him as the godfather of metal, but it further establishes him as the greatest heavy metal guitarist of all time."

"Our ears get bored very quickly. Sometimes a guitar plugged into an amplifier isn’t really enough."

"... in many ways, the days of conservation are, sadly, a little bit numbered ... the point I'm trying to make is ... how much wildlife has decreased or, in some cases, completely disappeared. But, the only places where our wildlife is flourishing — and this is really, more or less, all over the world — are ... s ... Managing a reserve is really just on a big scale."

"If you report what you think is a , which actually turns out to be a funny robin, you can validly distract from your error by claiming that an aberrant robin is actually ornithologically more intriguing than a Red-flanked Bluetail."

"Anyone who has witnessed Bill Oddie’s passion for nature, or watched the personable and wonderfully erudite wildlife presenter in action, might be forgiven for thinking that he could never really have been anything else. But such a role was not the natural end of a career that began with comedy sketches in a university amateur drama club. While most young people will recognise Oddie from such well-loved programmes as the BBC’s ' and ', his career is really a tale of two halves, and “the comedy years”, as he laughingly refers to them, made up a considerable period of his life. He was at Cambridge at the same time as and , and later become part of the comedy trio ‘’, whose humorous sketches delighted audiences throughout the 70s."

"... a hundred and fifty s — that is not natural ... Very little is this garden is actually you know, on any grand scale, natural. But it is friendly."

"I could sit and watch this sort of thing for ages — and, in fact, I do. Absolute routine — having had my breakfast down the road maybe. It's come back here, feed the birds ... and just take half an hour, often with a camera ..."

"The truth is, every single British reptile is somewhere in . ... They call 'em the big six. Actually, it's the fairly small, slithery six. ... It's , , s ..., (which is, in fact, a lizard) — there are two real lizards ... ... and ... ..."

"… 84% of people in England and Wales want foxhunting to remain illegal. That’s the kind of public support most politicians only dream of. Rather than pandering to a vocal minority who want to return Britain to the dark ages of animal cruelty “for fun”, we call on all politicians not only to reject any repeal, weakening or substitution of the but also to support its strengthening and its better enforcement."

"Since first I saw your face I resolved to honour and renown ye, If now I be disdained I wish my heart had never known ye. What? I that loved and you that liked shall we begin to wrangle? No, no no, my heart is fast, and cannot disentangle."

"There is a Lady sweet and kind, Was never face so pleased my mind; I did but see her passing by, And yet I love her till I die."

"Where beauty moves, and wit delights and signs of kindness bind me There, O there! where’er I go I’ll leave my heart behind me."

"Yet if his majesty our sovereign lord Should of his own accord Friendly himself invite, And say "I'll be your guest to-morrow night." How should we stir ourselves, call and command All hands to work! Let no man idle stand. [...] For 'tis a duteous thing To show all honour to an earthly king, [...] But at the coming of the King of Heaven All's set at six and seven: We wallow in our sin, Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn. We entertain him always like a stranger, And as at first still lodge him in the manger."

"Her free behaviour, winning looks Will make a Lawyer burn his books; I touched her not, alas! not I, And yet I love her till I die."

"The film has to tell the composer what it need, then it's in the lap of the gods, isn't it, as to whether others think it works or not."

"After a musical on the stage has been running a little while it can be quite painful watching. The singers get out of tune, the timpanist can come in halfway through the second act and fall over the gong."

"Looking at the hundred or so scores I have done you might question the choices, but in a lot of ways this business is about relationships."

"I am a composer. I am not a songwriter. Because the musical world has been so massively hijacked by big business we tend to see the single pop song as the all-important unit. But there is so much more to music than that, and while I have always taken a wide interest in every sort of music whatever its origins, the wonderful possibilities of extended music, of concertos and symphonies and opera and ballet and film and instrumental music in all its myriad forms - this is what I am interested in and what I both listen to and continually attempt to create."

"I’ve had some extraordinary, revelatory moments in the opera house over the years, but I’ve had an awful lot more disinterested moments, I’m not like one of those people who always goes and absolutely loves everything I see. More often than not I’m left a bit cold by it, but obviously, it’s the ultimate musical genre because of everything it brings to the table and the scope and the scale of the whole thing. I can hardly imagine that you can really be a composer and at least not harbor some sort of secret desire to write an opera one day."

"Every genre has its challenges. Sometimes it's harder to play a supportive role than to take center stage."

"It may not have had the glamor of being a film composer or being a pop star or whatever, but that’s not what I wanted. I just wanted the opportunity to be all the kinds of people I could be as a composer. I could be serious, I could be humorous, I could be evil, I could be nice and innocent, I could do angry music, I could do all sorts of things. So that was very fulfilling as a composer. And it kept me interested for my whole musical lifetime."

"With a comedy, you can easily take away the humor. So it’s very important to keep the pacing of it going, and to keep the lighthearted nature of it going. I think in many ways, a comedy is more difficult than drama"

"It would be hard to find a stranger instance of the irony of fate in all the history of the world. After being the idol of musical Europe when a mere child, Mozart had fulfilled in maturity all the promise of his early years. But as his powers rose to nobler heights his worldly prosperity seemed to decrease. As years went on poverty pressed harder and harder on him."

"Art seems to differ from other manifestations of human energy in welcolming so frankly the evidences of personality. Culture and progress alike deprecate aggressive individual prominence. The cherished ideal of the religious-minded is the effacement of self. The philosophical ideal is the entire and perfect accomodation of impulses and actions to the general well-being. But art not only welcomes the evidence of personal initiative; it demands as one of its first necessities copious and consistent proofs of individuality."

"Methods of art are the product of the patient labour of generations."

"I don’t say 'who'. I do say 'whom'. I never use the toilet, just the smallest room. I don't say gay. I still say queer. I think that Mussolini had the right idea."

"[Song]] Not bleakly, Not meekly Beat me on the bottom with the Woman's Weekly Let's do it, let's do it tonight!"

"I once went to one of those parties where everyone throws their car keys into the middle of the room. I don’t know who got my moped but I’ve been driving that Peugeot for years."

"I was researching Mrs Brown’s Boys and found that, with music hall, Laurel and Hardy, Les Dawson, Dick Emery and so on, more men had played working-class women in British comedy than women. [...] That's up until Victoria Wood. She almost single-handedly changed that. She and Billy Connolly essentially prepared the way for alternative comedy and the rise of the stand-up — bridging the gap between the working men's clubs and the comedy clubs. Before her, funny women were from a rarefied sphere like Joyce Grenfell. Wood spoke the way real people spoke and she was hugely successful. She made it possible for Tracey Ullman, even Peter Kay, to think a career was possible."

"We'd like to apologise to our viewers in the North - it must be awful for you."

"[On a difficult relationship with her mother, Helen] If she'd only gone out to work, we would all have been a lot happier. Being in the house drove her mad. She hated housework, cooking. She'd go into the garden and chop down trees. She was full of energy and batting against the walls with it. And this gave me a real sense that you had to have your own life. It's ridiculous to stay at home with your children if it drives you nuts. Children would much rather see a happy, smiley person come back."

"I was just thinking as Alan [Bennett] and I walked up the steps, how nice it would have been if one of us had come up in a stairlift."

"When you're in the middle of having a baby, it's a bit like watching two very inefficient removal men, trying to get a very large sofa through a very small doorway. Only in this case you can't say, "Oh sod it, bring it through the French windows"."

"Where are you in the menstrual cycle? Taurus."

"People think I hate sex. I don’t. I just don’t like things that stop you seeing the television properly."

"Sometimes I think that being widowed is God's way of telling you to come off the pill."

"[Asked if she ever had childhood holidays in Blackpool] No. What do you take me for? We used to go to Vienna."