Composing Quotes - Page 9

Composing is not a profession. It is a maniaa harmless madness.

Arthur Honegger

Madness, Profession

1951 I Am a Composer.

8 Copy quote

Show source
Since I started composing I have always worked with series of tempos, even superimposed the music of different groups of musicians, of singers, instrumentalists who play and sing in different tempos simultaneously and then meet every now and then in the same tempo.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Play, Singers, Musician

52 Copy quote
It seems that the increased number of scientific workers, their being split up into groups whose studies are limited to a small subject, and over-specialization have brought about a shrinking of intelligence. There is no doubt that the quality of any human group decreases when the number of the individuals composing this group increases beyond certain limits... The best way to increase the intelligence of scientists would be to decrease their number.

Alexis Carrel

Science, Men, Numbers

Alexis Carrel (1939). “Man the Unknown”

7 Copy quote

Show source
As to writing another book on geometry [to replace Euclid] the middle ages would have as soon thought of composing another New Testament.

Augustus De Morgan

Book, Writing, Science

8 Copy quote
I think I've done more recording in the past 10 years than most people, but it's all been directed toward film composing and soundtracks. Just the same, it's been great.

Stanley Clarke

Past, Thinking, Years

4 Copy quote
When I am composing, I try to clear my mind of having to publish, or having to sell a book or find readers. That kind of thinking gets in the way.

Maxine Hong Kingston

Book, Thinking, Mind

Interview with David L. Ulin, latimesblogs.latimes.com. February 6, 2011.

4 Copy quote

Show source
When the Second World War broke out, I felt that everyone must do his share, and I began composing songs and marches for the front. But soon events assumed such gigantic and far-reaching scope as to demand larger canvasses.

Sergei Prokofiev

Song, War, Events

49 Copy quote
From an outsider's perspective, it's amazing what [Clint Eastwood] does. If he's not directing a film, he's acting in it, or rather he's composing the music for that film. His commitment to what he does is astounding for all of us to witness. It's inspiring, actually.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Commitment, Perspective, Acting

"Clint Eastwood, Leonardo DiCaprio Interview, J Edgar". MoviesOnline Interview, www.moviesonline.ca. November 2011.

7 Copy quote

Show source
The next time you see a person with a composed face and a soft voice, remember that inside her mind she might be solving an equation, composing a sonnet, designing a hat. She might, that is, be deploying the power of quiet.

Susan Cain

Voice, Design, Mind

Susan Cain (2012). “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking”, p.266, Broadway Books

16 Copy quote

Show source
All these tales of people sitting down and composing symphonies just as though they were writing a letter are very much exaggerated; at least, it isn't that way in my work.

George Gershwin

Writing, Symphony, People

8 Copy quote
What I so like about Poussin and Cezanne is their sense of organization. Ilike the way in which they develop space and shape in architecturalcontinuity - the rhythm across their paintings. When I paint a landscape, Iget the greatest pleasure out of composing it. As I paint, I try to work outa visual sonata form or a fugue, with realistic images.

Ian Hornak

Organization, Space, Work Out

7 Copy quote
Composing's not voluntary, you know. There's no choice, you're not free. You're landed with an idea and you have responsibility to that idea.

Harrison Birtwistle

Responsibility, Ideas, Choices

The Observer, April 14, 1996.

5 Copy quote

Show source
As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.

Aleister Crowley

Self Confidence, Men, Numbers

"Magick Without Tears". Book by Aleister Crowley. Chapter 73, 1954.

5 Copy quote

Show source
Now I've heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you? It goes like this the fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen

Kings, Fall, Secret

Song: Hallelujah

28 Copy quote

Show source
For many artists fame complements the value of creative self-expression. Ludwig van Beethoven loved composing music, but he probably would have enjoyed it less if no one ever listened to the product.

Tyler Cowen

Artist, Self, Expression

Tyler Cowen (2000). “What Price Fame?”, p.2, Harvard University Press

7 Copy quote

Show source
You haven't time to think about the composition. In working directly from nature, the painter ends up by simply aiming at an effect, and not composing the picture at all; and he soon becomes monotonous.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Thinking, Ends, Painter

"Renoir: His Life and Work". Book by François Fosca, p. 176, 1975.

5 Copy quote

Show source
When I became thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Roman authors, I thought it incumbent upon me to do something towards the honor of the place of my nativity, and to vindicate the rhetoric of this ancient forum of our Metropolis from the aspersions of the illiterate by composing A Treatise of the Alercation of the Ancients; wherein I have demonstrated that the purity, sincerity, and simplicity of their diction is nowhere so well preserved as amongst my neighbourhood.

John Arbuthnot

Simplicity, Greek, Honor

George Atherton Aitken, John Arbuthnot (1892). “The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot, M.D.: Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians”

13 Copy quote

Show source
Gold and silver grow, and so does every other kind of metal, the same as the hair upon my head, or the wheat in the field; they do not grow as fast, but they are all the time composing or decomposing

Brigham Young

Hair, Gold, Fields

Brigham Young (1854). “Journal of Discourses”, p.219

4 Copy quote

Show source
I cannot learn creation from other people; I've got to do it myself. Now, honestly, I regret not studying - I don't know about harmonies, or anything, so if I'm composing a song, it's really hard.

PSY

Song, Regret, People

7 Copy quote
Although I don't know Paul McCartney, a mutual friend told me that Paul was reading my book, This Is Your Brain on Music, and stopped after chapter two. McCartney said he was concerned that if he learned more about how he does what he does (as far as composing music), he may not be able to do it anymore!

Daniel Levitin

Book, Reading, Two

9 Copy quote
Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem per se, the circumstance ... which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.

Edgar Allan Poe

Rose, Taste, Firsts

Edgar Allan Poe (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Illustrated)”, p.1283, Delphi Classics

4 Copy quote

Show source
Beyond the formative effects of reading on the individuals composing society, the fact that they have read the same books gives them experiences and ideas in common. These constitute a kind of shorthand of ideas which helps make communication quicker and more efficient. That is what we mean when we say figuratively of another person, We speak the same language.

Charles Scribner IV

Book, Communication, Reading

4 Copy quote
It was an interesting thing to do. Why did I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions.

Vladimir Nabokov

Book, Writing, Ideas

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

4 Copy quote

Show source
Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.

T. S. Eliot

Creative, Toil, Sifting

12 Copy quote
When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides that, I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well; and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad.

Jonathan Swift

Cutting, Men, Clothes

Jonathan Swift (1812). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ...: With Notes, Historical and Critical”, p.73

4 Copy quote

Show source

You May Also Like Quotes On:

Composer