John Eaton Quotations

We need it to capture the energy of contemporary life.

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.

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

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

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

But nevertheless, 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think the composer and production staff of an opera have a real responsibility to use visual elements of all kinds to make clear to the American audience, at any rate, exactly what is going on.

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'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.

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.

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.

Of course, in opera, you involve the audience so much with action and with what's happening on stage, that the music is the center of that action.

I wish that every opera company in America had a VOX season. There is nothing more helpful in making the public aware of the richness and variety of operatic music being written today. The composers represent the entire country. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the VOX season is a National Treasure!

What's important for me is to communicate the vision that I have in sound with the audience that's hearing it.

Well, I can't agree with you more, and I really wish every piece of mine were recorded, and I wish I had spent more time trying to pursue that.

I wait until something is really in the shape that I want to make it as a permanent record, because I think of recording as a permanent record.

So, to me, it's a question of not being afraid to embrace the tradition but also not being afraid to dive into boiling oil on occasion.

At least for now the canyon is preserved.

Not that one shouldn't use all of those technical advantage, but the essence of what's being communicated shouldn't be technology.

I mean, the 7th, the flat 7th which approaches the 7th harmonic, very often comes off sounding like the cry of a frightened child.