110 Quotes by Terry Teachout

A masterpiece doesn't push you around. It lets you make up your own mind about what it means - and change it as often as you like.

All of the most popular music of the '30s and '40s were deeply informed by jazz.

At its best, no art form is more thrilling than grand opera, yet none is at greater risk of following the dinosaurs down the cold road to extinction.

Charles Ives was writing radically innovative music, but nobody performed it, and nobody knew about it.

Copland was the first important American classical composer to go to work for Hollywood.

David Cromer, from Chicago, I think is the most gifted young director in America.

Even if I could, I wouldn't want to undo the transformation of jazz into a sophisticated art music.

Everybody in America was talking about TV early in 1949, though comparatively few Americans owned a set of their own.

For my part, I like live theater best when it's taut, concentrated and intimate.