Composer Quotes - Page 30

• The people of your century no longer require the service of composers. A composer is as useful to a person in a jogging suit as a dinsoaur turd in the middle of his runway.

  Frank Zappa

  People, Suits, Jogging

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• It's the vision of the composer that we have to determine, and not the absolute mathematical adherence of the score. In my experience, there have been occasions where I feel that a composer has not notated something as they meant to have it represented.

  Marc-Andre Hamelin

  Vision, Adherence, Score

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

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• Every composer understands and uses the system of notation differently, and that's what makes you appreciate the trouble they go through in doing so.

  Marc-Andre Hamelin

  Appreciate, Use, Trouble

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

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• When we work on a piece of music, we'll often read the biographies of the composer and learn about what was going on historically and artistically. But I believe that the connection to a piece of music is something much more personal and mysterious than all of these bits of information.

  Helene Grimaud

  Believe, Connections, Pieces

  Interview with Elijah Ho, www.thecounterpoints.com. January 29, 2014.

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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.

  Bradley Joseph

  Memorable, Writing, Musician

  Official Bio from bradleyjoseph.com,

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• I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. I really can’t think of any other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, is valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that — its humanity.

  Glenn Gould

  Meaningful, Moving, Thinking

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• I always felt that one day I would have to make the change in my own life, bite the bullet and see what it is to be a composer who conducts rather than the other way around.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  One Day, Bullets, Way

  "Maestro will pass baton to up-and-comer in '09" by Mark Swed, www.latimes.com. April 08, 2007.

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• When we play music we describe the echo the tableau of natural forms, their shapes and arrangements, as uncovered by the composer's imagination, which yet must be filtered through our own. There is no other way. And in acknowledging this tableau, this revelation, we must "hesitate", we must doubt, as the composer doubted, for no valid creation can issue unscarred by doubt, by that vast flux of wonder which precedes the construction of being.

  Russell Sherman

  Play, Issues, Echoes

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• Originally, I wanted to be a composer. I always tell people, 'I think of myself as a composer.

  Ornette Coleman

  Thinking, People, Composing

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• I don't meet stockbrokers or carpenters or coal miners; I spend all day with actors, composers and photographers.

  Michael Caine

  Coal Miners, Actors, Photographer

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• One day the 'Maple Leaf' will make me King of Ragtime Composers.

  Scott Joplin

  Kings, One Day, Ragtime

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• ...in my lieder concerts, I always strove, when possible, to sing only the works of a single composer, so that the audience could be gradually drawn into a particular creative genius' way of thinking, and could follow him.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Thinking, Creative, Genius

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• I went to Hollywood. I put the action in Hollywood. I watched a lot of movies, maybe 100 or something close to that. I have tons of DVDs now at home. I don't know what to do with them because they're not useful anymore. My kids never watched them. I read a lot of autobiographies, listened to a lot of music by classical era composers like Franz Waxman, Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman and Leonard Bernstein. I listened to only that kind of music the entire time I was writing, even at home.

  Michel Hazanavicius

  Kids, Home, Writing

  "Director Michel Hazanavicius THE ARTIST Interview". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. November 26, 2011.

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• Working with composers often is a really frustrating experience because you speak a different language and, oftentimes, they take two or three jobs, at the same time. They're difficult and pretentious and they're tormented artists.

  Peter Berg

  Jobs, Artist, Often Is

  Source: collider.com

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• It's nice that all the composers have said that nobody interprets a lyric like Fred Astaire. But when it comes to selling records I was never worth anything particularly except as a collector's item.

  Fred Astaire

  Nice, Records, Selling

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

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• What's great about [Guettel] is his very distinct voice as a composer. And that distinct voice is something worth cherishing and expressing so we just didn't want to screw that up.

  Bartlett Sher

  Voice, Want, Cherish

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• I don't think they understand it's as important as math and science. It rounds you out as a person. I think it gives you a love of certain things. You don't have to become the next great composer. It's just nice to have heard certain things or to have seen certain things. It's part of being a human being.

  Marvin Hamlisch

  Nice, Math, Thinking

  "Marvin Hamlisch, Whose Notes Struck Gold, Dies at 68" by Rob Hoerburger, www.nytimes.com. August 7, 2012.

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• A good composer is slowly discovered and a bad composer is slowly found out.

  Ernest Newman

  Music, Found, Funny Music

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• My closest friends are Roger Moore, who is an actor, Sean Connery, who is an actor, Terry O'Neill, who is a photographer, Johnny Gold, who was the boss of Tramp, and Leslie Bricusse, who is a composer.

  Michael Caine

  Boss, Gold, Actors

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• I didn't grow up imagining myself as an opera composer. Only once in my entire adolescence did I attend an opera. I went and saw Aida at the old Met, didn't understand a thing about it, and thought it was pretty awful. But I think I had it in my genes without even realising it.

  John Adams

  Growing Up, Thinking, Opera

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• I've been very fortunate as a composer to be involved with projects that have really propelled my scores forward. I'm very proud of it.

  Alan Menken

  Proud, Projects, Score

  Source: collider.com

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• There's always been good and bad music. Many composers hide behind modern music in order to not make music.

  Pepe Romero

  Order, Modern, Good And Bad

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• I think there's a time as a writer when you want to see the best things in life, and you go out wherever you go with your dreams as a writer or a composer.

  Tori Amos

  Dream, Thinking, Things In Life

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• I would prefer to listen to a French classical composer like Olivier Messiaen than to the pop hits of the day.

  Matt Groening

  Pops, Classical Composers

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. April 26, 2006.

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• In my study I can lay my hand on the Bible in the pitch dark. All truly inspired ideas come from God. The powers from which all truly great composers like Mozart, Schubert, Bach and Beethoven drew their inspirations is the same power that enabled Jesus to do his miracles.

  Johannes Brahms

  Jesus, Inspiration, Dark

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