Creativity Quote by Neville Marriner

It’s the kind of sentence that pretends to be casual while smuggling in a whole theory of how art institutions grow up. Neville Marriner, speaking as a working musician and builder of ensembles, frames the change as sudden: “in one leap.” That phrasing matters. It suggests a tipping point more than a gradual evolution, the moment when an orchestra stops being a club of like-minded players and starts behaving like a machine with standards, schedules, and reputations to protect.

“Friendly society” is deliberately homely. It conjures warmth, informality, maybe even the slightly ramshackle charm of people making music because they want to be there. Marriner isn’t mocking that; he’s acknowledging what gets lost when the stakes rise. The subtext is that professionalism isn’t just excellence - it’s governance. It brings auditions, hierarchies, external expectations, money, critics, recording contracts, touring logistics. The group’s identity shifts from internal chemistry to public product.

The hedge “almost” does quiet emotional work. Marriner lets himself feel the ambivalence: pride at the upgrade, a twinge of mourning for the easy camaraderie that professionalism can sterilize. It’s also a musician’s realist phrasing - he knows “professional” is not a moral category. It’s a set of pressures that can sharpen playing and narrow the space for joy.

Contextually, Marriner’s career (not least with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields) sits right on that fault line: postwar musical life turning nimble, semi-amateur collectives into globally branded ensembles. The line captures the exact instant when art becomes an institution - and everyone has to decide what they’re willing to trade for polish.