Graham Nasby's Online Resources

 

The Quotations Of Leif Segerstam

A few years ago we worked with Leif Segerstam, a composer/conductor from Finland. He had a remarkably creative way of using the English language, and as usual, I started writing my favourite quotes in our music. After a few days, I learned that several other members of the orchestra were doing the same thing. This is a compilation of our efforts.

Unlike the collected quotations of another famous conductor, these aren't just the fractured phrases of someone who speaks English as a second language - we have before us a record of the creative mind of a kaleidescopic flexator electrifically fluxating new meaning into a tired old language.

  • Could we have a relativity normal beginning?
  • Take ``La Forza Del Destino'' and half it.
  • I want the music more traumatised.
  • Like an old time Western locomotive we can get the organity of the puffing.
  • The kaleidescopic flexator on the podium --- the conductor.
  • Keep an irony rhythm.
  • You are still mauving.
  • The string section without the basses is a plasmatic living cluster.
  • Here you should have a little worm.
  • A sort of indignated way of playing before the la minore explosion.
  • You have to become a little dirty about the fingerboard there.
  • Flutterzungen in the mind.
  • Was this a conspiration to read my beat?
  • Just play in your box until you come to the climax. . . so that we hear the clappering.
  • . . . if you get music early in your brainal functions.
  • The old quarter note becomes very freshly enough the new quarter note.
  • You could take a speed of 33 metronome, or 22.
  • A dividing 50 percent reaction tempo-wise.
  • The quintuplet should be freshly and rudely the same as the triplet.
  • I am in 76 of this here.
  • Still together, conductified.
  • Could I have something which is close to that which is underneath the pencil?
  • The atmospheric things must have a millimetre to do with the speed.
  • The winds can rehearse the length of the teedle-eedle-boom.
  • Something is satelliting out of the control of the beated music.
  • I have words for everything that can be expressed.
    • Coincidentimently
    • Embryomalic
    • Electrifically
    • Fiveishness
    • Flimmer
    • Inexclickable
    • Fenugrish five things
    • I am fluxating in 8.
    • It is a Valsefy.
  • There is a slight worm to be executed very much together.
  • It should be the emigrated Loch Ness. (to the basses)
  • Please don't play sloppy dactyls that they don't know what it is.
  • We do it Wiener Schule kind of poco apostrophe.
  • Try to use this optical notation.
  • How about talking about the spot where someone composes the registration number of his car.
  • You haven't experienced it because nobody is doing it.
  • Could we have a rude accord between First and Second Violins?
  • You could allow if you have got long ears. . .
  • . . . whatever bumble thing. . .
  • . . . a small dog noise. . .
  • . . . almost a gorilla sound. . .
  • You don't need to count here. You won't get lost because at the end, I will turn and look at you stoppingly!
  • Could I see lead being sacrificed on the paper?
  • If you are not the leader you will be the first one.
  • Dibble-Dibble. . . GUSTAV!!
  • Keep the fermata of the rest interesting.
  • Three centimetres of wavy lines, then you play the music.
  • Somebody singing a far-fetched diagonals from Sibelius' Finlandia.
  • Hypnotic and destiny-filled.
  • It is very beautiful what you played, but you are forgetting one thing that makes it tomorrow too loud.
  • Who would sacrifice a violin?
  • You play whenever you get there.
  • Tonnmeister, are you heavy enough in the Glockenbox?
  • I always get very pounding sounds on the one there.
  • At 7 o'clock we do the Klami piece and then my piece places.
  • Two terracic slowing downs.
  • . . . a comma in the Heaven.
  • The gravity is on the beat composed.
  • Listen to these gorilla players. (in reference to the Cello section)
  • Is the Donnerblech organised in the strings now?
  • You could really be princessy pochissimo.
  • Wait for the Puccini bit in four and make like the Diva.
  • . . . like an augmented ambulance siren.
  • I'm still here doing things in this direction.
  • Segerstam disease: gastronomical music.
  • More grease in the pianissimo.
  • The non-metric pulsator on the podium.
  • It's a late threeness.
  • There are misleadings. . .
  • More like James Bond Goldfinger.
  • You don't have to dirten your notation.
  • It really sounds like some Tom and Jerry accompanimiento sounding.
  • Use parabolic crescendi. . . they are more animalic.
  • My left hand will look at you.
  • We get a plankton plasmatic flimmer.
  • Each individual is not together.
  • We will enter in the right times, so the shortening is to the left.
  • Native folkloric haemiolas that you should have in your Mahler bloods.
  • I have to be the bumper to take all these colleagueual comments to the playing trumpets.
  • Please compose the six rests that are missing.
  • Could you technically program that for the next time playing?
  • Quasi dim pencil, and feathers are for the wish here.
  • I am very hacking because of the scales there.
  • Don't make it sound as brutal as my left hand, please.
  • You are still mouldering (to the percussion).
  • There are people swallowing time.
  • We still have a pleep.
  • There is a confusion about.
 


 
Last updated: November 26, 2005