Art & Creativity Quote by Michael Tilson Thomas

Michael Tilson Thomas is poking at a modern reflex: when the ideas thin out, turn the knob up. Coming from a conductor who has spent decades balancing orchestral power with transparency, the line isn’t anti-loudness so much as anti-evasion. “Extreme volume” becomes a kind of stage lighting for the ears, a sensory wash that can feel like significance without requiring any.

The intent is partly pedagogical, partly cultural critique. In rehearsal-room terms, it’s a warning to performers and composers: don’t confuse impact with substance; don’t let decibels replace phrasing, harmony, or argument. In consumer terms, it’s a jab at how we’ve learned to equate intensity with value, as if music must physically overwhelm to count as “real.” The subtext is harsher: loudness can be a cover for insecurity, or for laziness, or for an industry incentive to chase immediate bodily sensation over durable musical thought.

It also lands as an orchestral insider’s observation about the arms race of sound. Late-Romantic gigantism, film-score maximalism, arena amplification, even the streaming-era loudness wars all reward bigness. Tilson Thomas is defending a different kind of authority: the quiet confidence of material that holds up at any dynamic, where a melody can survive a whisper and a structure can withstand scrutiny. The line works because it’s not moralizing; it’s diagnostic, naming a trick we’ve all felt and often mistaken for meaning.