Composer Quotes - Page 19

• I knew a gentleman that I had worked with over the years, who is no longer with us, and was a great influence in my life named Cachao - a Cuban musician, composer, arranger, and creator of the Mambo. The integrity of the journey is what's important - how you conduct yourself in the process. That's what Cachao was always about. He had great integrity, great dignity, was very humble, and dedicated to his art.

  Andy Garcia

  Art, Integrity, Humble

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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

  Fabio Frizzi

  Warmth

  Source: dailydead.com

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• I'm an old guy, and I was protesting during the Vietnam War. We killed fifty Asians for every loyal American. Every artist worth a damn in this country was terribly opposed to that war, finally, when it became evident what a fiasco and meaningless butchery it was. We formed sort of a laser beam of protest. Every painter, every writer, every stand-up comedian, every composer, every novelist, every poet aimed in the same direction. Afterwards, the power of this incredible new weapon dissipated.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Country, War, Artist

  Source: www.sharedhost.progressive.org

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• I recall improvisational drummer and composer Michael Evans telling me a story of someone who had the opportunity to meet Cage and give him a record, and John Cage just smiled and said, "You know I have nothing to play this on?"

  David Grubbs

  Opportunity, Giving, Just Smile

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• The challenge to the improvisor is to get permanence into his spontaneity. The challenge to the composer is to get spontaneity into his permanence.

  Barry Finnerty

  Music, Challenges, Jazz

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• Thankfully, it is getting better for women composers. We now have five women Pulitzer Prize winners in music since 1983: Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Shulamit Ran, Melinda Wagner, Jennifer Higdon, and Caroline Shaw. When Marin Alsop was asked what it felt like to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, she said, "I am exceedingly proud to be 'the first' but I am also a bit shocked that there can still be firsts for women in 2013!"

  Barbara Harbach

  Night, Get Better, Proud

  Source: www.barbaraharbach.com

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• My pieces usually are programmed on concerts in which the other works are standard repertoire. My music always sounds very different when it's on a concert of all contemporary music. It always seems to stick out at an odd angle. This also makes me think of a question I sometimes debate with my friends: does the music of a composer directly reflect that composer's personality? This is a difficult one, but I think it usually does.

  Jennifer Higdon

  Thinking, Personality, Different

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I thought I wanted to be a performing and recording artist, and played many recitals and performances beginning in the 1970s. In the 1980s I went to the British Library and ordered and received reels of historical women and men keyboard composers, and thus was born Vivace Press.

  Barbara Harbach

  Artist, Men, Historical

  Source: www.barbaraharbach.com

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• Helmut Walcha was a gifted organist, improviser, and composer! He would play Evensong every week at his church for free, the Dreikönigskirche in Frankfurt, where the audience would consist of only six or so of us students. When he would give a public recital that had a hefty ticket price, the church was packed.

  Barbara Harbach

  Giving, Church, Students

  Source: www.barbaraharbach.com

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• For my qualifying concert, Helmut Walcha would not coach Charles-Marie Widor or any American compositions. In his defense, his forte was Germanic composers, and his forte was really a fortissimo!

  Barbara Harbach

  Coaches, Composition

  Source: www.barbaraharbach.com

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• The culture of suppressing women composers and performers goes centuries back in Germany and other countries. Just think of Fanny Mendelssohn and the struggles she and many other women had to endure to get their music recognized. How many women's compositions were left to languish in attics, only to be thrown out by future generations! So much has been lost over the centuries.

  Barbara Harbach

  Country, Struggle, Thinking

  Source: www.barbaraharbach.com

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• I have written six symphonies, they are smaller-scale works. I seem to emit my themes, work them out, combine and intertwine them, and then come to a close. I usually feel that there are no superfluous extras, but probably most composers feel that way about their works.

  Barbara Harbach

  Extras

  Source: www.barbaraharbach.com

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• Men have been in the forefront of music for centuries, and they have written glorious music, loved and appreciated by many. In some ways, men are still in the forefront. There is a lot of room for composers of all types of music by both men and women, nowadays.

  Barbara Harbach

  Men, Appreciated, Glorious

  Source: www.barbaraharbach.com

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• In some ways, it is difficult for contemporary composers to find an audience. Both men and women would love a culture that embraced and hungered for new music, as they did in the Classical period. I tell my students that they should just keep writing, write what pleases you, and don't worry about what people or critics may think about your music.

  Barbara Harbach

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  Source: www.barbaraharbach.com

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• Composers are in some ways the last frontier of musician that gets a paycheck for their musical services.

  Cliff Martinez

  Musical, Musician, Way

  "Neon Melodies: Composer Cliff Martinez Interviewed". Interview with Adam White, thequietus.com. July 1, 2016.

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• The psychological detective story in "Equus" made Peter Shaffer's name as a playwright. But it was his next play, "Amadeus," that cemented his reputation, largely because of the movie version. Another battle of wills, it was the story of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart seen through the eyes of lesser composer Antonio Salieri.

  Bob Mondello

  Eye, Play, Names

  "British Playwright Peter Shaffer, Who Wrote 'Equus,' Dies At 90". "All Things Considered" with Robert Siegel, www.npr.org. June 6, 2016.

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• There is no "End" to be written, neither can you, like an architect, engrave in stone the day the garden was finished. A painter can frame his picture, a composer can notate his coda, but a garden is always on the move.

  Mirabel Osler

  Moving, Garden, Stones

  Mirabel Osler (2012). “A Gentle Plea for Chaos”, p.84, A&C Black

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• I fool around with guitar and I can fool around on piano. I don't really play either instrument although I can play a couple of songs on guitar. You don't really need to be able to play to compose. There are many composers and arrangers who work out of their heads.

  Frankie Laine

  Song, Couple, Guitar

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• I've certainly stayed a marginal figure, though I became a member of the "surveillance committee" fairly early on. I can actually live pretty well with this, because I'm allowed to work in peace - except when I have to give strings of interviews... And also, I've never sought a position of power in the music business. I became a teacher not so as to found a Kagel School, but to transmit knowledge. My work as a composer should be the only yardstick by which my contribution can be measured.

  Mauricio Kagel

  Teacher, School, Position Of Power

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• Most composers and arrangers these days use computer programs and keyboards, but I'm one of those dinosaurs that still writes it down on score paper and still dreams it up in his ear first.

  Phil Coulter

  Dream, Writing, Use

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• I wanted to be a composer for a while, and for a while, and maybe still, I found writing music much easier than writing poetry. So maybe my brain clings to it.

  Shane McCrae

  Writing, Brain, Easier

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Yes, for me audio-visual performance has its roots in my experience working as an improvising musician and composer.

  Kurt Ralske

  Roots, Musician, Audio

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• I was a musician who began playing with computers, to see if they could make some tasks simpler. I developed some "tricks" or strategies for working with audio files, and then discovered that the same tricks could be applied to video files, or really, any type of data. Previously I made many different kinds of music. I did some work as a composer of film scores. In that role, my task was to create audio to match and deepen the visual. In my work now, the role is often reversed: I have to create images to match and deepen the audio.

  Kurt Ralske

  Data, Musician, Different

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• I think, when you're a young composer, you're told constantly that what you're supposed to do is figure out what your voice is. "What is your thing supposed to sound like?" You know: "What's the thing you do," that everyone can recognizably tell from a long distance is you and then you're supposed to be in search of that marker and you're supposed to find it and you're supposed to live there for the rest of your life. And it seemed to me, from a young age, that was what I was encouraged to do. You find a sound and that's your sound! That's what you do.

  David Lang

  Distance, Thinking, Long

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• I have kind of an intuitive feeling as a composer as to what would be appropriate for those groups and how to feature certain paths in a certain way, whether there was dialogue in a scene, or whether there was no dialogue and music was telling the story at that point.

  Howard Shore

  Feelings, Groups, Would Be

  Source: collider.com

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