Gordon Getty Quotes

• When my opera Plump Jack was performed in 1989, my first piano teacher sent me something that I’d composed when I was four. I remember I played it, and it still sounded like me. I’m the same composer I was then.

  Gordon Getty

• There is no change – I’m as deep or as shallow as I ever was. What’s new is on-the-job experience. This is what you gain with years.

  Gordon Getty

• The Getty family has been fully supportive throughout this situation, and for that, I am very grateful.

  Gordon Getty

• Nicolette, Kendalle, and Alexandra are my children. Their mother, Cynthia Beck, and I, love them very much.

  Gordon Getty

• My music is all about an idealistic human personality. I have 19th-century ideals.

  Gordon Getty

• My father was so much more than an accomplished businessman.

  Gordon Getty

• It’s true that I tend to daydream. I’m the same person in business as I am in music: I can be distracted and absentminded. It’s my style.

  Gordon Getty

• If you have more money than you need, you have to give it away. It’s a duty. I get to choose whom to sponsor, and I like to give to the areas that I know something about.

  Gordon Getty

• I’ve managed to dodge the curse. Not all my family have. Of course, music helped me – music is all about civilization, about something worthwhile. It’s all about ideas.

  Gordon Getty

• I’ve had every advantage in the world, despite the 18 years of silence which were nobody’s fault but mine.

  Gordon Getty

• I’m a terrible singer, but it helps when I have to call a taxi.

  Gordon Getty

• I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson’s poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

  Gordon Getty

• I want to make the world better.

  Gordon Getty

• I see only adaptations – not revolutions.

  Gordon Getty

• I personally do not write highbrow music. If I do, it’s by accident.

  Gordon Getty

• I just have to take my chances like any other composer.

  Gordon Getty

• I feel that I belong to the 19th century. Some composers’ music is very topical. It almost says, ‘This is about what I read in newspapers yesterday.’ Not mine.

  Gordon Getty

• I don’t think events in your life affect your music.

  Gordon Getty

• I do not think that music keeps evolving. It evolved through Bach; since then, in my humble opinion, all the innovations added nothing.

  Gordon Getty

• Either your understanding of the meaning of music is there from the beginning or it is not.

  Gordon Getty

Gordon Getty (21)

Birth:	20th December, 1934
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Businessman, Composer, Investor, Philanthropist

About

Gordon Peter Getty was born in San Francisco, California, USA. He is an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and classical music composer, the fourth child of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. When his father died in 1976, Gordon assumed control of Getty's US$2 billion trust. He earned a B.A. in music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is one of the nation's leading venture capitalists and philanthropists. In 2002, he donated US$3 million to the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, a charitable trust. He is a classical music composer, whose compositions include the opera Plump Jack, Joan and the Bells, piano pieces and a collection of choral works.

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Today's Anniversary - 20th January

Births

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Deaths

• 2011 - Reynolds Price
• 1867 - Nathaniel Parker Willis
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