Quotes from John Eaton

However, yes, especially as one gets older, you know, you really hope that your music will become more generally available, even though some of the performances might be riddled with faults.

I want the audience to be so involved in the sweep of the music.

I think I was first to do live performances on a modern electronic sound synthesizer.

I've just simply used what I've used because of the great, great expressive potential of it.

We need it to capture the energy of contemporary life.

It's not important to me to found a school; it's not important to me to have disciples.

Well, let me, first of all, say, that as a microtonal composer, I've never been much of a theorist.

I'm thinking in terms of a point of departure, a field of action for performers to express an expressive need of mine which hopefully the context of music would convey.

I think one of the greatest enemies in the use of technology, however, is the idea that if you use the technology you have to throw other things out of the window.

We need to have as broad a range as possible, because life itself has that kind of range.

I think one of the greatest enemies in the use of technology, however, is the idea that if you use the technology you have to throw other things out of the window.

The question had been complicated by the advocacy of some good men, who saw in the separation of the white and black races in the schools of the Nation a dangerous tendency toward the creation of class distinctions in our American life. It was the expression of a theory of equality right in itself, but which it would have been fatal at that moment to enforce.

If you look at the timing of many of the Greek dramas from the theatrical point of view, it's all off, and I think the reason for that is that music played a very important part.

Nevertheless, one doesn't have time to think, oh, well, this is a quarter tone sharp, or flat.

Well, the very best operas are the ones written by the very best composers.

The way that I got involved with microtonal music was, frankly, through jazz.

I think a lot of composers get into trouble just making up a plot and expecting an audience to follow that.

In other words, I think that if an audience listens to something as an experience of how in tune it is or something of that kind, that the whole point is somehow being missed, and the music has failed.

Well, opera began with an intent to resuscitate Greek drama, that is, modern opera as we know it.

We need to open up the future. We also need to keep everything valuable from the past.

It's music ultimately that matters in opera, and opera is a piece of music reaching out as a vision in sound reaching out to the world.