Composer Quotes - Page 31

• The ability to understand and deliver comedy and tragedy is extremely rare in one composer.

  Signe Baumane

  Tragedy, Comedy, Ability

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am a composer in search of oblivion; and I'm always slightly ashamed to admit that I compose.

  Alexander Borodin

  Oblivion, Ashamed

  19 Copy quote

• One day I'll be able to relax a bit, and try and become a good composer.

  Benjamin Britten

  One Day, Trying, Relax

  8 Copy quote

• That is the operatic problem; the singer must keep up a big head of steam while trying to appear secretive, or seductive, or consumptive. Some ingenious composer should write an opera about a group of people who were condemned by a cruel god to scream all the time; it would be an instantaneous success, and a triumph of versimilitude.

  Robertson Davies

  Writing, People, Seductive

  Robertson Davies (1986). “The papers of Samuel Marchbanks”, Viking, 1986

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What gives Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great expressive composers never sacrificed form to expression.

  Camille Saint-Saens

  Expression, Two, Giving

  36 Copy quote

• Händel is the greatest and ablest of all composers; from him I can still learn.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Stills, I Can

  Ludwig Van Beethoven (2004). “Beethoven: The Man and the Artist”, p.58, 1st World Publishing

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every philharmonic orchestra merely interprets the composer. My goal was to create new music by that composer. In doing so, I wanted to find the painter's creative center and become familiar with it, so that I could see through his eyes how his paintings came about and, of course, see the new picture I was painting through his eyes - before I even painted it.

  Wolfgang Beltracchi

  Eye, Goal, Creative

  11 Copy quote

• Composers can do things that weren't allowed in the 17th century. Until we had composers like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff to break the rules.

  Aaron Zigman

  Break, Century, Rachmaninoff

  6 Copy quote

• There is competition. It's almost like I'm back in tennis competing in a way. There are usually about twenty composers vying for the number one spot for a big or medium film.

  Aaron Zigman

  Numbers, Tennis, Competition

  4 Copy quote

• I'm not a frustrated concert composer, and the concert pieces I've done have been a small part of my work. What I've sought there is instruction, variation from the demands of film and relief from its restrictions.

  John Towner Williams

  Frustrated, Relief, Variation

  "The force is with him". Interview with Stephen Moss, www.theguardian.com. February 3, 2002.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think the tendency to paint composers or styles of music with too broad a brush - for example, identifying composers as writers of "simple" or "complex" music - has become increasingly problematic and is almost never productive.

  Michael Hersch

  Simple, Thinking, Style

  4 Copy quote

• A mission that comes from the heart to promote these things and to encourage composers to write, then of course they should do it. And there are more than a few pianists these days who do this, fortunately.

  Marc-Andre Hamelin

  Writing, Heart, Should

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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of my heroes is a composer named James Bernard, and oh my God... I can still listen to his music today and be stirred and moved by it. But I think that you fall in love with... Well, again, when you're young, it really is more powerful. Much more terrifying.

  John Carpenter

  Falling In Love, Powerful, Hero

  7 Copy quote

• Any working composer or painter or sculptor will tell you that inspiration comes at the eighth hour of labour, rather than as a bolt out of the blue. We have to get our vanities and our preconceptions out of the way and do the work in the time allotted.

  John Towner Williams

  Inspiration, Vanity, Blue

  "The force is with him". Interview with Stephen Moss, www.theguardian.com. February 3, 2002.

  44 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have a team, the same team of filmmakers I worked with on 'Pi' and 'Requiem'. Which is my cameraman, and my composer, and my producer. We've all worked together for a number of films.

  Darren Aronofsky

  Team, Numbers, Together

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. November 21, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.

  Ned Rorem

  Mean, Needs, States

  Ned Rorem (1970). “Critical Affairs: A Composer's Journal”, George Braziller

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Around eighth grade I decided I wanted to be a composer and that's what I went to college for. Just a few years back, I switched out of composition and into creative writing so I could work with words.

  Joanna Newsom

  Writing, College, Years

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think a lot of people get intimidated by the language of music, but everyone owns music. I think there's nothing standing in between a composer and her audience. I think a lot of people feel that way because they feel it's rarefied, but it's really not. You should feel the impact of it without being able to name it because it's ultimately a primal thing.

  Jeanine Tesori

  Thinking, Impact, Names

  "Composer Jeanine Tesori on Her Artistic Process and Rewarding Female Ambition". Interview with Victoria Myers, www.indiewire.com. March 27, 2015.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Demand, Chess

  Vladimir Nabokov (2015). “Letters to V??ra”, p.531, Knopf

  4 Copy quote

  Show source