Composer Quotes

• If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

  Gustav Mahler

  Funny, Music, Expression

  Letter to Max Marschalk, March 26, 1896.

  98 Copy quote

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• A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

  Frank Zappa

  Music, Writing, Air

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.162, Simon and Schuster

  89 Copy quote

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• The greatest composer does not sit down to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

  Ernest Newman

  Doe, Inspired

  27 Copy quote

• I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

  Richard Strauss

  Inspiring, Music, Second Chance

  57 Copy quote

• My dream was always to be a composer, but fashion came very easily.

  Gianni Versace

  Dream, Fashion

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  20 Copy quote

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• Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

  Howard Dietz

  Inspirational, Music, Thinking

  45 Copy quote

• Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.

  John Lennon

  Love, Life, Happiness

  34 Copy quote

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

  Gavin Bryars

  Writing, Names, Prepared

  Klassiknet Interview, www.culturekiosque.com.

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• Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.

  Pablo Casals

  Thieves, Originality, Forget

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.

  Thomas Beecham

  Writing, Boys, Tunes

  48 Copy quote

• To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Time, Stress, Humor

  76 Copy quote

• Although technical discussions are interesting to composers, I suspect that the truly magical and spiritual powers of music arise from deeper levels of our psyche.

  George Crumb

  Spiritual, Interesting, Levels

  11 Copy quote

• Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.

  Giacomo Puccini

  Inspiring, Art, Inspiration

  82 Copy quote

• I would advise my young colleagues, the composers of symphonies, to drop in sometimes at the kindergarten, too. It is there that it is decided whether there will be anybody to understand their works in twenty years time.

  Zoltan Kodaly

  Years, Symphony, Twenties

  55 Copy quote

• Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.

  Brian Greene

  Science, Avant Garde, Mathematics

  19 Copy quote

• With Hitchcock I had little relationship. I was called to replace Bernard Herrmann, his favorite composer, in Torn Curtain, after the bitter fight between them.

  Maurice Jarre

  Fighting, Littles, Bitterness

  9 Copy quote

• I think the thing's that perhaps sad really is that younger people haven't come in and I think it must have been absolutely fantastic to have worked in the 50's when you had all of the great Broadway composers and when West Side Story didn't win the Tony Award.

  Andrew Lloyd Webber

  Winning, Thinking, Awards

  10 Copy quote

• I am but an architectural composer.

  Alexander Jackson Davis

  Architecture

  47 Copy quote

• That is the way a great master carpenter feels, or an architect or composer or anyone who creates anything - people want to be appreciated for what they have done.

  David Amram

  People, Done, Want

  18 Copy quote

• Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

  Hector Berlioz

  Writing, Ideas, Despair

  Hector Berlioz (1935). “Memoirs of Hector Berlioz from 1803 to 1865: comprising his travels in Germany, Italy, Russia, and England”

  20 Copy quote

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• Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully.

  Johannes Brahms

  Real, Harmony, Used

  29 Copy quote

• I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  Very Happy, Feels

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Maurice Ravel

  Littles, Worst, Quantity

  10 Copy quote

• Gifted women musicians and composers rarely received their due.

  James Cook

  Musician, Gifted, Dues

  17 Copy quote

• I am certain that most composers today would consider today's music to be rich, not to say confusing, in its enormous diversity of styles, technical procedures, and systems of esthetics.

  George Crumb

  Diversity, Confusing, Style

  8 Copy quote