Composer Quotes - Page 13

• Natural emotion is the soul of poetry, as melody is of music; the same faults are engendered by over-study of either art; there is a lack of sincerity, of irresistible impulse in both the poet and the, composer.

  Edmund Clarence Stedman

  Art, Soul, Faults

  Edmund Clarence Stedman (1885). “Poets of America”

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• The best results come when people believe in and feel strongly about the music they are playing. Just as composers write for certain types of performers, performers are also looking for certain things.

  Michael Hersch

  Believe, Writing, People

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• George Rochberg once said that 'to be a composer, you need to have fire in the belly, fire in the brain, but most importantly, an iron stomach.' I feel this is for the most part true, and hope I might convey something of it to younger composers.

  Michael Hersch

  Iron, Fire, Brain

  Interview with Elijah Ho, www.thecounterpoints.com. April 14, 2014.

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• Did I become court composer through masterful procrastination? Hardly!

  Rachel Hartman

  Procrastination, Court

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• The musical culture in the United States has no doubt suffered severe setbacks, especially in funding, since the early 2000's. However, I've been amazed at the resiliency of those involved with contemporary music in this country. I think composers and those dedicated to contemporary music have reacted with tremendous creativity and resourcefulness.

  Michael Hersch

  Country, Creativity, Thinking

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• Fortunately, I'm able to make a living from comics, so I'm privileged enough to be quite choosy, though most cartoonists can't afford to be. It's really an uncomfortable situation, since I'm not an illustrator, though I do get calls from morally indefensible businesses offering me money to decorate their ambitions. It's extremely rare, almost unheard of, in fact, that I am asked to do a comic strip. Do writers get calls to pen Toyota advertisements? Do composers get asked to write chamber pieces about exercise machines?

  Chris Ware

  Writing, Ambition, Exercise

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Historically, there is a fight between the sound designer and the composer. You see them in the mixing room and they're always fighting because the composer wants the music to be heard and the sound designer wants the sound to be heard.

  Alfonso Cuaron

  Fighting, Mixing, Sound

  Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. September 30, 2013.

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• My interactions with musicians have been simply that: interactions with musicians. Issues of gender, or anything else beyond the music-making, have in my experience played no role in whether or not a musician has been able to articulate my intentions as a composer.

  Michael Hersch

  Issues, Able, Musician

  Interview with Elijah Ho, www.thecounterpoints.com. April 14, 2014.

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• My father was a very good amateur pianist, and he had a collection of books on technique. One of the things he had was a small volume of exercises by Rudolf Ganz, in which Ganz mentions the pedagogical work of the Swiss composer, Émile-Robert Blanchet, who wrote a ton of polyphonic exercises for one-hand. These exercises were a great help for finger independence, which I acquired early on. This might have given me somewhat of an edge, a facility to be able to knock any obstacle that was in my way.

  Marc-Andre Hamelin

  Father, Book, Exercise

  Interview with Elijah Ho, www.thecounterpoints.com. November 8, 2013.

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• In the scientific community you find competent teachers and original researchers, just as in the musical community you find many good performers but very few good composers.

  Mario Bunge

  Teacher, Community, Musical

  Source: deutsche-denker.de

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• the writer must resist this temptation [to quote] and do his best with his own tools. It would be most convenient for us musicians if, arrived at a given emotional crisis in our work, we could simply stick in a few bars of Brahms or Schubert. Indeed many composers have no hesitation in so doing. But I have never heard the practice defended; possibly because that hideous symbol of petty larceny, the inverted comma, cannot well be worked into a musical score.

  Ethel Smyth

  Emotional, Practice, Temptation

  Ethel Smyth (1922). “Streaks of life”

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• It's hard to put into words the impact of the perfect lyric, melody or contagious beat that moves you in an unexpected way. Authors, composers and artists have tried - and here we've rounded up our favorite quotes that help to begin forming structure around such an unspoken universal force. Which are most meaningful to you? If you had to sum up the power of music and sound in one sentence, what would you say?"A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence."

  Leopold Stokowski

  Meaningful, Moving, Artist

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• Louie Bellson represents the epitome of musical talent. His ability to cover the whole musical spectrum from an elite percussionist to a very gifted composer and arranger never ceases to amaze me. I consider him one of the musical giants of our age.

  Oscar Peterson

  Musical, Age, Giants

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• The September 11 attacks were the greatest work of art in the cosmos...compared to that, we composers are nothing

  Karlheinz Stockhausen

  Art, September 11, Cosmos

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• I've been called a minimalist composer for more than 30 years, and while I've never really agreed with the description, I've gotten used to it.

  Philip Glass

  Years, Minimalist, Used

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• Once embarked on a course of sensationalism, the composer is forced into a descending spiral spin from which only the most experienced pilot can flatten out in time.

  Constant Lambert

  Pilots, Spirals, Descending

  "Music, Ho!". Book by Constant Lambert, "Music and the Naughty 'Nineties", Hogarth Press edition, p. 64, 1985.

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• When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Conductor

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• Composition is interesting because, in a sense, you always have to let it go. Unless you're a true composer/performer, you're always sending a PDF and then someone else makes it. It's like instructions for a short story, faxed to every English student who's studying it.

  Nico Muhly

  Interesting, Let It Go, Stories

  Interview with Sean Michaels, believermag.com. October 1, 2008.

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• My favorite composers are the ones that tell the story. I love Wagner. I love Mahler. Prokofiev. The programmatic music. I listen more to classic rock because I don't like the contemporary music very much.

  Patti LuPone

  Rocks, Stories, Mahler

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• As a composer you want to tell musicians two completely contradictory things. You want to say, "Play exactly what I wrote, but bring your own thing to it." In a lot of ways they feel like opposites, but in a sense, my job is to cajole or encourage decisions that I approve of.

  Nico Muhly

  Jobs, Opposites, Play

  Interview with Sean Michaels, believermag.com. October 1, 2008.

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• Im like any other composer. If you give me five years to write a symphony, Im still going to be asking for more time two days before its due.

  Darren Criss

  Writing, Years, Two

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• I am a composer first and foremost, and have always believed that being able to write memorable melodies is what sets musicians apart. My songs bring images to the listener's mind. The object is to transport my listeners to another place, some place sacred and spiritual that will make them glad they took the ride.

  Bradley Joseph

  Spiritual, Song, Memorable

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• I can play the guitar, the dulcimer, the piano, and the drums. However, I am not a "performance quality" musician. Rather, I am a composer and a producer.

  Frederick Lenz

  Guitar, Play, Piano

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• Playwrights have texts, composers have scores, painters and sculptors have the residue of those activities, and dance is traditionally an ephemeral, effervescent, here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of thing.

  Twyla Tharp

  Inspirational, Dance, Gone

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• Thus, if a composer wants to produce music that is relevant to his contemporaries, his chief problem is not really musical, though it may seem to him to be so; it is a problem of attitude to contemporary society and culture in relation to the basic human problem of learning to be human.

  John Blacking

  Music, Attitude, Culture

  John Blacking (1974). “How Musical is Man?”, p.104, University of Washington Press

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