Best 137 quotes in «composer quotes» category

Even if, in one or other of them, I had a particular word or words in mind, I would not tell anyone, because the same word means different things to different people. Only the songs say the same thing, arouse the same feeling, in everyone - a feeling that can't be expressed in words.

God is the composer; you are the song.

Having renounced his native land, Sanger adopted no other. He roved about from one European capital to another, never settling anywhere for long, driven forwards by his strange, restless fancy. Usually he quartered himself upon his friends, who were accustomed to endure a great deal from him. He would stay with them for weeks, composing third acts in their spare bedrooms, producing operas which always failed financially, falling in love with their wives, conducting their symphonies, and borrowing money from hem. His preposterous family generally accompanied him. Few people could recollect quite how many children Sanger was supposed to have got, but there always seemed to be a good many and they were most shockingly brought up.

I am writing like an angel

For me, a paint brush is the only tool I use extensively in my works, to push paint on canvas and conduct melodies. And that's exactly what Garden Avenue is, and all of my projects after that.

I'll admit that writing doesn't always come, but I'm totally against walking around looking at the sky when you're experiencing a block, waiting for inspiration to strike you. Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov didn't like each other and agreed on very few things, but they were of one opinion on this: you had to write constantly. If you can't write a major work, write minor trifles. If you can't write at all, orchestrate something.

In many times, after creating a piece of work I want to stand up and applaud.

It's a cute little studio apartment that has just what I need: a bed, a couch, a table, a chair, and a coffee-maker.

Make your book of life a musical. Never abandon obligations, but have fun leaving behind a colorful legacy. Never allow anybody to be the composer of your own destiny. Take control of your life, and never allow limitations implanted by society tell you how your music is supposed to sound — or how your book is supposed to be written.

Many contemporary composers have been building walls of sounds following their own clever devices. But then, who lives inside those rooms?

The Prince stood beside the timpanist to count his rests for him and see that he came in in the right place. I suppressed all the trumpet passages which were clearly beyond the players' grasp. The solitary trombone was left to his own devices; but as he wisely confined himself to the notes with which he was thoroughly familiar, such as A flat, D and F, and was careful to avoid all others, his success in the role was almost entirely a silent one.

(From Boulez, an authorized biography by Joan Peyser) At the chapel door he [a priest associated with a school Boulez attended] asked me if what he had been told was true: that Boulez no longer believed in God. I said it was...

In a timepiece, a sweep of a second hand is so slim in a way that it doesn't wait for no man, and that's why we choose to conceive things from the heart.

In major movies these days, the fine details of music, instrumentation and sound design are lost. This is a shame, and it is one of the various reasons that make me not want to be part of the entertainment business. Although I have done it in the past, finally I know that I'm not here to create industry products. Music is more than images, it's more than language... it's the medium that's capable of communicating the answers to the Big Questions.

It is a cute studio apartment that has just what I need: a bed, a couch, a table, a chair, and a coffee-maker.

Sometime in high school it dawned on me that perhaps I was a little different...I realized music wasn't swirling in the minds of my friends drowning out conversations and making it difficult to concentrate in class. I concluded I had a some sort of mental illness and that it was best to keep it to myself.

There was that sound again--snap, then a footfall. She tried to whirl around as a dark form--Dear God--sprang with a splash from the darkness--grabbed her from behind, shoved her under the water.

The terms that Sforza Cesarini offered Rossini, 400 Roman Scudi, were not ungenerous, though it must have been galling for Rossini to see the Figaro, Luigi Zamboni, getting almost twice as much, and the Almaviva, Manuel Garcia, being offered three times the amount. Of the first-night cast, only the 'altro buffo', Bartolomeo Botticelli, who played Bartolo, and the 'seconda donna', Elisabetta Lowselet, who played Berta, were paid less than the composer.

We are all beautiful instruments of God. He created many notes in music so that we would not be stuck playing the same song. Be music always. Keep changing the keys, tones, pitch, and volume of each of the songs you create along your journey and play on. Nobody will ever reach ultimate perfection in this lifetime, but trying to achieve it is a full-time job. Start now and don't stop. Make your book of life a musical. Never abandon obligations, but have fun leaving behind a colorful legacy. Never allow anybody to be the composer of your own destiny. Take control of your life, and never allow limitations implanted by society, tell you how your music is supposed to sound — or how your book is supposed to be written.

A good composer is slowly discovered and a bad composer is slowly found out.

A large part of my work has been collaborating with composers; I think we've commissioned about 140 pieces now, a lot of them percussion concertos.

A lot of composers I know hate temp scores because people get attached to them.

Any asshole can write a tone-row. It takes a composer to write a tune.

A supreme composer can only come out of a musical nation.

Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

There are two characters in me: a doodler and a tuner. And the only thing that makes me go crazy is when they both fight for their turn.

A composer's job involves the decoration of fragments of time.

A lot of composers before me have been on this mission to change the world by getting off equal temperament, and I'm definitely one of those.

Americans can pretty much sing anything, whereas foreign singers are often limited in style, language, even composer.

Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.

As a composer I approached the drums differently than a non-composing drummer. I embraced drum machines.

Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries.

Composers are not all good conductors.

Composers need words, but they do not necessarily need poetry. The Russian composer, Aleksandr Mossolov, who chose texts from newspaper small ads, had a good point to make. With revolutionary music, any text can be set to work.

Composers can do things that weren't allowed in the 17th century. Until we had composers like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff to break the rules.

Claude Debussy was a rare phenomenon a composer profoundly and subversively revolutionary.

Composers combine notes, that's all.

Gifted women musicians and composers rarely received their due.

[Composers] Mark [Shaiman] and Scott [Wittman] are unreal.

composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.

Good composers don't borrow, they steal

Did I become court composer through masterful procrastination? Hardly!

Human warmth is perhaps the most lacking in a composer who lives his life in a recording studio.

Freddie Bryant is a brilliant young guitarist and composer.

I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.

I always work with the same composer, his name is Ali Helnwein. I don't have a musical background.

I am a composer in search of oblivion; and I'm always slightly ashamed to admit that I compose.

I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work - the best and the worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively little.

I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.

Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived... I would uncover my head and kneel down on his tomb.