Composer Quotes - Page 28

• It is necessary for us to explain the involuntary repugnance we possess for the nature and personality of the Jews. The Jews have never produced a true poet. Heinrich Heine reached the point where he duped himself into a poet, and was rewarded by his versified lies being set to music by our own composers. He was the conscience of Judaism, just as Judaism is the evil conscience of our modern civilization.

  Richard Wagner

  Lying, Civilization, Evil

  "'Das Judenthum in der Musik' ('Judaism in Music')". Essay by Richard Wagner, 1850.

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• The community of mathematicians is similar to an imaginary community of musical composers whose only satisfaction is obtained by the interchange among themselves of the musical scores they compose.

  Cornelius Lanczos

  Community, Musical, Satisfaction

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• All is made clear,regarding Abraham and Sarah's traversal into Egypt, when we realize what biblicists meant by the term "Egypt." As Ralph Ellis so brilliantly points out, the name Egypt was employed by the composers of the Old Testament to denote Thebes in Lower Egypt. This was the city and region controlled by the adversaries of the Hyksos. It was considered a separate region, with different rulers, gods, customs, and politics. So, it was not the country of Egypt that Abraham visited, but Thebes within Egypt.

  Michael Tsarion

  Country, Egypt, Cities

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• When I was a kid, I looked at art as a way of blending everything. One of my favorite composers is Wagner - who coined the term "gesamtkunstwerk," or "total art work." That's what was going on in the 19th century, and the 20th century just kept it going.

  DJ Spooky

  Art, Kids, Way

  "DJ Spooky’s Icy Philharmonic". Interview with Hannah Levintova, www.motherjones.com. October 17, 2011.

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• Perhaps the chief requirement of [the conductor] is that he be humble before the composer; that he never interpose himself between the music and the audience; that all his efforts, however strenuous or glamorous, be made in the service of the composer's meaning - the music itself, which, after all, is the whole reason for the conductor's existence.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Humble, Effort, Requirements

  "The Cambridge Companion to Conducting". Book by José Antonio Bowen (p. 16), November 20, 2003.

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• Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

  Franz Liszt

  Variation, Brahms, Mines

  "Remembering Franz Liszt" by Arthur Friedheim and Alexander Siloti, (p. 138), 1961.

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• I am a black man dedicated to expression; expression of the joy and pride of blackness. I consider myself neither poet, composer, or musician. These are merely tools used by sensitive men to carve out a piece of beauty or truth that they hope may lead to peace and salvation.

  Gil Scott-Heron

  Pride, Men, Expression

  Gil Scott-Heron (1990). “So Far, So Good”

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• I often wonder if I was destined to be a composer. I think I decided and I followed my star.

  Peter Sculthorpe

  Stars, Thinking, Wonder

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• Think it a vile habit to alter works of good composers, to omit parts of them, or to insert new-fashioned ornaments. This is the greatest insult you can offer to Art.

  Robert Schumann

  Art, Thinking, Insults You

  Robert Schumann (1860). “Advice to Young Musicians”, p.14

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• If you're a composer, there's never a moment you're not working.

  Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

  Moments, Ifs

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• As the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful; and the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath like space and time, make all matter gay.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Eye, Gay

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.36, Penguin

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• Classic music somehow changed, and it changed between the first and the second world wars, and somehow what happened was that the hero that had been the composer, the hero now was the performer, and especially the conductor.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  War, Hero, Firsts

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I have often read critical pieces where the critic said that what the composer was trying to do didn't come off. I have wondered what the critic meant if he didn't know what the composer was trying to do.

  Ornette Coleman

  Trying, Pieces, Said

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• A lot of composers I know hate temp scores because people get attached to them.

  Steven Price

  Hate, People, Score

  Source: collider.com

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• I grew up mostly in Champaign, Illinois. My dad was at the University of East Illinois, so I was always around the music. One of my dad's buddies was the avant-garde composer John Cage, so I picked up on that weird classical and eclectic music.

  Stuart Hamm

  Dad, Illinois, Cages

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• Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky . The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrant nude differs from a nude by Manet.

  Arthur Koestler

  Reality, Space, Discovery

  Arthur Koestler (1969). “The Act of Creation”

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• The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Artist, Men, Giving

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “The World as Will and Representation”, p.260, Courier Corporation

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• Those who were still able to write beautiful melodies were kitsch composers like Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky approaches true art not in his numerous beautiful melodies, but when a melodic line is thwarted.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Beautiful, Art, Writing

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• My sole ambition as a composer is to hurl my javelin into the infinite space of the future.

  Franz Liszt

  Ambition, Space, Javelin

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• It is hard to think of another composer who so perfectly marries form and passion.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Passion, Thinking, Form

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• Then the bow orchestra began to play an apocalyptically beautiful canon, one of those pieces in which, surely, the composer simply transcribed what was given, and trembled in awe of the hand that was guiding him.

  Mark Helprin

  Beautiful, Hands, Play

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.433, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself...Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel.

  George Gershwin

  Inspiration, Waiting, Doe

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• The artist must forget the audience,
  forget the critics, forget the technique, forget everything but love for the music.
  Then, the music speaks through the performance,
  and the performer and the listener will walk together
  with the soul of the composer, and with
  God.

  Mstislav Rostropovich

  Artist, Forget Everything, Soul

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• The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert - in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again…no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

  Daniel Levitin

  Basketball, Player, Numbers

  "Outliers: The Story of Success". Book by Malcolm Gladwell, November 18, 2008.

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• The genius of a composer is found in the notes of his music; but analyzing the notes will not reveal his genius. The poet's greatness is contained in his words; yet the study of his words will not disclose his inspiration. God reveals himself in creation; but scrutinize creation as minutely as you wish, you will not find God, any more than you will find the soul through careful examination of your body.

  Anthony de Mello

  Inspiration, Greatness, Soul

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