"My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting"
About this Quote
The specific intent is practical and a little political. Salonen is defending a kind of musicianship that’s increasingly rare: composers who know the orchestra from the inside, and conductors who aren’t merely curators of the canon. The subtext is that conducting teaches you consequences. You learn what projects, what muddies, what fatigues players, what kinds of complexity read as thrilling versus merely difficult. That lived knowledge reshapes orchestration, pacing, even the emotional temperature of a piece: you write less for the “ideal” ensemble in your head and more for the human machine in front of you.
Context matters because Salonen emerged as a late-20th-century modernist without the hermeticism. His music often feels sleek, kinetic, engineered for impact. Conducting is the lab work behind that polish: a direct line from podium authority to compositional clarity, where the test isn’t theory but whether the room catches fire.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Salonen, Esa-Pekka. (2026, January 17). My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-music-wouldnt-sound-the-way-it-does-if-i-hadnt-53032/
Chicago Style
Salonen, Esa-Pekka. "My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-music-wouldnt-sound-the-way-it-does-if-i-hadnt-53032/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-music-wouldnt-sound-the-way-it-does-if-i-hadnt-53032/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.

