Composer Quotes - Page 2

• The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Real, Thinking, Awareness

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• I was always drawn to Broadway musicals, and obviously composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter were writing music that I found wildly impressive.

  Marvin Hamlisch

  Writing, Broadway, Berlin

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• The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.

  Benjamin Britten

  Inspiring, Sleep, Writing

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• I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Sound, Orchestra, Want

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• Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary.

  Anton Rubinstein

  Thinking, Call Me, Pianist

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• I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.

  Jascha Heifetz

  Writing, Play, Two

  1961 In Life.

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• To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.

  Robert Schumann

  Inspiring, Art, Men

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• I think it's good for the composer to teach because you always have new students and you have to begin at the beginning and make things clear.

  John Corigliano

  Thinking, Students, Teach

  "The Gospel According To John Corigliano". Interview with Frank J. Oteri, www.newmusicbox.org. February 01, 2005.

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• I probably belong to a type of composer of songs who keeps thinking about melody... I am old fashioned.

  Toru Takemitsu

  Song, Thinking, Type

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• Every composer's music reflects in its subject-matter and in its style the source of the money the composer is living on while writing the music.

  Virgil Thomson

  Writing, Style, Matter

  Virgil Thomson (1984). “A Virgil Thomson reader”, Plume

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• Truly there would be reason to go mad were it not for music.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Mad, Would Be

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• That is basically me, and although I have done many things in my life - conducting, playing piano, and so on - what is fundamental is my being a composer.

  Morton Gould

  Piano, Fundamentals, Done

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• Like any other composer of opera, I choose a subject not for polemical reasons, but because it contains vivid characters in highly charged dramatic situations.

  Carlisle Floyd

  Character, Dramatic Situations, Opera

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

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Handel, Tombs

  Ludwig van Beethoven (2017). “Delphi Masterworks of Ludwig van Beethoven (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

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• The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.

  Harrison Birtwistle

  Names, Giving, Influence

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• I'm not an architectural composer.

  Harrison Birtwistle

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• I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Inspirational, Life, Wisdom

  Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft (1966). “Themes and episodes”

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• I began my career with infantile dreams of becoming a composer.

  Ivor Novello

  Dream, Careers, Becoming

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• Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful.

  David Del Tredici

  Energy, World, Maverick

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• I continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did want to be a composer, and after that I never changed my mind.

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Math, Years, Mind

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• The structural thinking I use in the concert hall is unnecessary to most film projects, and most film composers make better use of the enormous range of pop and other materials and techniques required of them than I probably would, faced with the same challenge.

  John Corigliano

  Thinking, Challenges, Technique

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• The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me.

  Michael Tilson Thomas

  Trust, Years, San Francisco

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• To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole.

  Gustav Mahler

  Judging, Whole

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• I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena.

  Edgard Varese

  Hair, Natural, Objects

  "Sound Structure in Music". Book by Robert Erickson, 1975.

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• Composers love to write for symphony orchestras because the symphony is the Rolls Royce of musical instruments.

  David Del Tredici

  Writing, Symphony, Musical

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