"Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them"
About this Quote
Wagner’s jab lands because it treats an orchestral section like an unruly species: don’t make eye contact, don’t feed them attention, and they might stay in their enclosure. It’s conductorly stagecraft disguised as a quip, but the joke isn’t just about trombones. It’s about power.
In a Wagner-sized orchestra, brass isn’t decorative; it’s a force of nature. Trombones can obliterate texture, hijack an emotional contour, and turn “support” into “takeover” with one enthusiastic entrance. By framing them as performers who get bolder when noticed, Wagner sketches a psychology of musicianship: attention is currency, and certain voices will always spend it loudly. The line flatters the composer-conductor’s authority, too. He’s the one who decides who gets seen. Everyone else is supposed to behave like a mechanism.
The subtext is pure Wagnerian control-freakery, the same impulse that fuels his expanded orchestras, obsessive dynamics, and the famous desire to fuse music, drama, and staging into a single dominating experience. “Never look” is an instruction about discipline and hierarchy: the podium must project calm command, not negotiation. It also hints at a sly truth about performance culture: musicians play not only to the score, but to the room’s micro-signals - a glance, a raised eyebrow, the permission to be a little extra.
Underneath the humor is a composer who knew that the biggest sounds are often the most eager to claim the spotlight, and that managing them is as much politics as it is art.
In a Wagner-sized orchestra, brass isn’t decorative; it’s a force of nature. Trombones can obliterate texture, hijack an emotional contour, and turn “support” into “takeover” with one enthusiastic entrance. By framing them as performers who get bolder when noticed, Wagner sketches a psychology of musicianship: attention is currency, and certain voices will always spend it loudly. The line flatters the composer-conductor’s authority, too. He’s the one who decides who gets seen. Everyone else is supposed to behave like a mechanism.
The subtext is pure Wagnerian control-freakery, the same impulse that fuels his expanded orchestras, obsessive dynamics, and the famous desire to fuse music, drama, and staging into a single dominating experience. “Never look” is an instruction about discipline and hierarchy: the podium must project calm command, not negotiation. It also hints at a sly truth about performance culture: musicians play not only to the score, but to the room’s micro-signals - a glance, a raised eyebrow, the permission to be a little extra.
Underneath the humor is a composer who knew that the biggest sounds are often the most eager to claim the spotlight, and that managing them is as much politics as it is art.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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