Composer Quotes - Page 25

• And if I ever DO see [Kenny G] anywhere, at any function - he WILL get a piece of my mind, and maybe a guitar wrapped around his head.

  Pat Metheny

  Guitar, Mind, Pieces

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• The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking "Is there a meaning to music?" My answer would be, "Yes", And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be "No."

  Aaron Copland

  Music, Art, Would Be

  What to Listen for in Music (1939) ch. 2

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• Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music.

  Sergei Rachmaninoff

  Inspirational, Music, Jazz And Life

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

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Musical, Nations, Supreme

  Ralph Vaughan Williams (1987). “National Music: And Other Essays”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media.

  Milton Babbitt

  Media, Withdrawal, World

  Milton Babbitt (2011). “The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt”, p.53, Princeton University Press

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• People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven Quartet.

  Witold Lutosławski

  Music, Airports, People

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• I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

  Elvis Presley

  Music, Witty, Humorous

  Quoted in Robert Byrne, The Other 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1984)

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• We are God’s gift to each other. Like a master composer, He brings all the instruments together, each with a different tone, each playing a different part, and He makes it turn out so beautifully.

  Jack Canfield

  Together, Different, Tone

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• I don't ascribe to the idea of the ivory tower composer who sits alone in a room composing his masterpieces and then comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets. It doesn't work like that. The job of a composer is putting something down on a piece of paper that will inspire the person who's playing.

  John Zorn

  Jobs, Ivory Tower, Ideas

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• 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.

  James Fenton

  Needs, Revolutionary, Newspapers

  "Soul music" by James Fenton, www.theguardian.com. November 22, 2002.

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• In simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers of narratives in words and on paper.

  Mikhail Lermontov

  Nature, Heart, Simple

  Mikhail Lermontov (2015). “A Hero of Our Time”, p.32, Xist Publishing

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• The modern composer is a madman who persists in manufacturing an article which nobody wants.

  Arthur Honegger

  Want, Modern, Madmen

  1951 I Am a Composer.

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• Bruce Katz is a spectacular talent! He's a brilliant composer and arranger who uses uncommon and unique musical intelligence to redefine jazz and blues far beyond the pale of the accepted definitions of keyboard competence. Whether on piano or organ, when you hear Bruce Katz you know it's him, unmistakably and uniquely.

  Larry Coryell

  Unique, Piano, Musical

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

  Claude Debussy

  Revolutionary, Debussy, Phenomenon

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• Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Inspiring, Art, Architecture

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

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• When people listen to my music, I hope that they will notice that if you take a piece by a composer like Schubert, the major and the minor triad is an extermely important thing not merely as harmony, but in creating melodic lines. Schubert is always walking up and down with arpeggios on C, E, G and so forth. I am not doing anything different really, except using a different system of harmony.

  Elliott Carter

  Creating, People, Important

  Interview with Joel Bons, as quoted in notes for album "Elliott Carter: Homages and Dedications" (CD booklet, p. 17), 2003.

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• The composer does not want the self-sufficiency of a richly complex text: he or she wants to feel that the text is something in need of musical setting.

  James Fenton

  Self, Musical, Doe

  "An Introduction to English Poetry". Book by James Fenton, 2002.

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• I think it's really the job of the composer, the artist, the painter, the writer to present people with options. I'm just really reflecting the thoughts and actions around me.

  Ian Anderson

  Jobs, Artist, Thinking

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• Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.

  Richard Wagner

  Music, Looks, Opera Singing

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• There are two kinds of music. One comes from the strings of a guitar, the other from the strings of the heart. One sound comes from a chamber orchestra, the other from the beating of the heart's chamber. One comes from an instrument of graphite and wood, the other from an organ of flesh and blood. This loftier music I speak of tonight is more pleasing than the notes of the most gifted composers, more moving than a marching band, more harmonious than a thousand voices joined in hymn and more powerful than all the world's percussion instruments combined. That sweet sound of love.

  Michael Jackson

  Sweet, Powerful, Moving

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• I'm an English songwriter/composer, working in Mandarin and trying to find something about Chinese culture that I really relate to and respect and feel some genuine emotions for - and it's quite hard, the pentatonic scale, and that, in a way, is why I think it works. Because I'm forced to limit myself to quite strict rules about what I did. Maybe that's how I avoided pastiche.

  Damon Albarn

  Thinking, Chinese, Trying

  "Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett". Interview with Scott Plagenhoef, pitchfork.com. January 26, 2009.

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• Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Music, Wisdom, Philosophy

  Ludwig van Beethoven, Friedrich Kerst, Henry Edward Krehbiel (1964). “Beethoven, the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words”, p.13, Courier Corporation

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• Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.

  Yo-Yo Ma

  Musician, Jazz, Force

  "Cellist Yo Yo Ma: His career and music". www.cnn.com. March 15, 2001.

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• It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful.

  Benjamin Britten

  Music, Beautiful, Musical Life

  Benjamin Britten (2011). “Letters from a Life Vol 1: 1923-39: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten”, Faber & Faber

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• Every bit of theorizing I've ever done, including my interest in Berg, has come as a consequence of discoveries I made as a composer and interests that I developed as a composer. I never thought of my theory as being a kind of irrelevant activity to my composing.

  George Perle

  Discovery, Done, Kind

  "George Perle, a Composer and Theorist, Dies at 93" by Allan Kozinn, www.nytimes.com. January 24, 2009.

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