John Eaton Quotes

• 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.

  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.

  John Eaton

• I really write for people.

  John Eaton

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

  John Eaton

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

  John Eaton

• 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.

  John Eaton

• 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.

  John Eaton

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

  John Eaton

• 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.

  John Eaton

• 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.

  John Eaton

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

  John Eaton

• 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.

  John Eaton

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

  John Eaton

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

  John Eaton

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

  John Eaton

• We need it to capture the energy of contemporary life.

  John Eaton

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

  John Eaton

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

  John Eaton

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

  John Eaton

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

  John Eaton

John Eaton (22)

Birth:	1935
Death:	2nd December, 2015
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Composer

About

John Charles Eaton was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an American composer. He graduated from Princeton University in 1957. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 1970. He subsequently held faculty appointments at Indiana University and the University of Chicago. He was a prominent composer of microtonal music, and worked with Paul Ketoff and Robert Moog during the 1960s in developing several types of synthesizer.

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