Creativity Quote by Neville Marriner

Casting an ensemble the way you’d cast a chord is a very Neville Marriner move: practical, unsentimental, and quietly exacting. When he says he wanted players who "fit together" and "sounded in tune", he’s not talking about the basics of pitch. He’s talking about chemistry that’s audible - the kind of collective instinct that makes a group breathe like one organism. In a world that fetishizes virtuosos, Marriner’s line is a reminder that greatness often lives in the seams, not the spotlight.

The intent is managerial as much as musical. Marriner, best known for building the Academy of St Martin in the Fields into a precision instrument, is describing recruitment as design. "From the start" signals a founding philosophy: blend before bravura, shared style before individual brand. The subtext is an argument against the star system - the idea that you can assemble excellence like a fantasy roster and expect art to happen. You can hire talent; you can’t hire unanimity.

"Tune" works here as a metaphor for temperament. The best ensembles aren’t just synchronized; they’re aligned in values: how they phrase, how they listen, how they handle ego, how they respond to correction. Marriner’s understated language masks a hard standard: if you can’t adjust, you don’t belong. In cultural terms, it’s an early statement of what we now call "fit", minus corporate jargon - a belief that cohesion is not a nice-to-have, it’s the sound itself.