Composition Quotes - Page 23

• The impressionistic method leads into a complete splitting and dissolution of all areas involved in the composition, and color is used to create an overall effect of light. The color is, through such a shading down from the highest light in the deepest shadows, sacrified an degraded to a (black-and-white) function. This leads to the destructions of the color as color.

  Hans Hofmann

  Black And White, Color, Light

  Helmut Friedel, Tina Dickey, Hans Hofmann, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus München (1998). “Hans Hofmann: Wunder Des Rhythmus und Schönheit Des Raumes : [exhibition at the Städtische Galerie Im Lenbachaus in Munich, from 23 April to 29 June 1997, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, from 12 September to 2 November 1997 ]”, p.95, Hudson Hills

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• The impulse of nature, fused through the personality of the artist by laws arising from the particular nature of the medium, produces the rhythm and the personal expression of a work. Then the life of the composition becomes a spiritual unity.

  Hans Hofmann

  Spiritual, Artist, Expression

  "Search for the Real: And Other Essays". Book by Hans Hofmann. "Painting and Culture", p. 58, 1948.

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• Of the eternal corporeal substance (which is not producible ex nihilo, nor reducible ad nihilum, but rarefiable, condensable, formable, arrangeable, and "fashionable") the composition is dissolved, the complexion is changed, the figure is modified, the being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle persevering which was always the one material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible.

  Giordano Bruno

  Principles, Substance, Elements

  "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast". Book by Giordano Bruno, 1584.

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• Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing is changed, is formed or deformed, but there always remains only that thing which cannot be a subject of dissolution, since it is not possible that it be a subject of composition, and therefore, either of itself or by accident, it cannot be said to die.

  Giordano Bruno

  Substance, Said, Changed

  "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast". Book by Giordano Bruno, 1584.

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• It's not always easy for a father to understand the interests and ways of his son. It seems the songs of our children may be in keys we've never tried. The melody of each generation emerges from all that's gone before. Each one of us contributes in some unique way to the composition of life.

  Fred Rogers

  Song, Children, Father

  Fred Rogers (2006). “Wisdom from the World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember”, p.45, Peter Pauper Press, Inc.

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• Regardless of its purpose, the humpback-whale song is the most complex piece of nonhuman composition on earth. Whether it's art, prayer, or booty call, the humpback song is an amazing thing to experience firsthand, and I suspect that even once the science of it is put to bed, it will remain, as long as they sing, magic.

  Christopher Moore

  Song, Art, Prayer

  "Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings". Book by Christopher Moore, June 3, 2003.

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• Anything good that I have written has, at some point during its composition, left me feeling uneasy and afraid. It has seemed, for a moment at least, to put me at risk.

  Michael Chabon

  Feelings, Risk, Moments

  Michael Chabon (2011). “Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands”, p.163, Open Road Media

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• In your works, you have realized what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so greatly longed for in music. The independent progress through their own destinies, the independent life of the individual voices in your compositions, is exactly what I am trying to find in my painting.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Independent, Destiny, Voice

  "Schonberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter" by Klaus Kropfinger, edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), (p. 9), 2003.

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• God is utterly simple; for every composite being necessarily has a cause of its own composition, and so, since God is the first principle of all things, there can be no real composition whatever in God. Now, in an utterly simple being there can be nothing that is not that simple being itself. In God, therefore, whatever really is, is the same as God, is the same as that which is, is the same as that which subsists, and hence necessarily subsists.

  Bernard Lonergan

  Real, Simple, Firsts

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• I am sad that the LDK has chosen not to participate in that first meeting. They are unhappy about the current composition of the council.

  Bernard Kouchner

  Unhappy, Firsts, Unhappiness

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• There is a kinship between music and painting - with the same words used to describe both, as when a musical composition is said to have color and a painting to have rhythm.

  Alton Tobey

  Color, Musical, Painting

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• The craft with which the world is made runs also into the mind and character of men. No man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which Nature has taken to heart.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Determination, Taken

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.373, Modern Library

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• No man reads a book of science from pure inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions, which contain a quick succession of events.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Reading, Men

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Edmond Malone (1824). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., Comprehending an Account of His Studies, and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order: A Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition, Never Before Published; the Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great Britain, for Near Half a Century During which He Flourished”, p.209

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• At the moment I am occupied by an investigation with Kirchoff which does not allow us to sleep. Kirchoff has made a totally unexpected discovery, inasmuch as he has found out the cause for the dark lines in the solar spectrum and can produce these lines artificially intensified both in the solar spectrum and in the continuous spectrum of a flame, their position being identical with that of Fraunhofer's lines. Hence the path is opened for the determination of the chemical composition of the Sun and the fixed stars.

  Robert Bunsen

  Determination, Stars, Sleep

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• This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Entire regional airsheds, crop plant environments, and river basins are heavy with noxious materials. Motor vehicles and home heating plants, municipal dumps and factories continually hurl pollutants into the air we breathe. Each day almost 50,000 tons of unpleasant, and sometimes poisonous, sulfur dioxide are added to the atmosphere, and our automobiles produce almost 300,000 tons of other pollutants.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Home, Motor Vehicles, Rivers

  Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty, February 8, 1965.

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• The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice. The compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages.

  Edward Gibbon

  Religious, Regret, Years

  Edward Gibbon (2000). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.96, Modern Library

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• Composition for me is, externally at least, scarcely distinguishable from catatonia.

  Richard Wilbur

  Richard Wilbur, William Butts (1990). “Conversations with Richard Wilbur”, p.180, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.

  Elmore Leonard

  Writing, May, Narrative

  "Seven deadly sins" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. July 21, 2001.

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• You don't just go to the studio and say, 'I'm going to write a hit.' It becomes a hit when people like your compositions.

  Chuck Berry

  Writing, People, Like You

  "What I've Learned: Chuck Berry" by Tom Junod, www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

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• To write is, indeed, no unpleasing employment, when one sentiment readily produces another, and both ideas and expressions present themselves at the first summons; but such happiness, the greatest genius does not always obtain; and common writers know it only to such a degree, as to credit its possibility. Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

  Samuel Johnson

  Perseverance, Writing, Expression

  Samuel Johnson (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson: The adventurer and idler”, p.145

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• Film composing is a splendid discipline, and I recommend a course of it to all composition teachers whose pupils are apt to be dawdling in their ideas, or whose every bar is sacred and must not be cut or altered.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Teacher, Cutting, Ideas

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

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• I couldn't portray a women in all her natural loveliness.. I haven't the skill. No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of beauty, the beauty that appears to me in terms of volume of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty interpret my subjective impression. Nature is mere a pretext for decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. I want to express the absolute, not merely the factitious woman.

  Georges Braque

  Art, Skills, Weight

  Raymond Cogniat, Georges Braque, Joanne Greenspun (1980). “Georges Braque”

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• Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.

  Samuel Johnson

  Historical, Mind, Penetration

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Edmond Malone (1824). “The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., comprehending an account of his studies, and numerous works, in chronological order: a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published; the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain, for near half a century during which he flourished”, p.373

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• I was always self-taught, there was no-one to study with when I was doing composition.

  Richard Meale

  Self, Taught, Study

  "The Music Show" with Andrew Ford, www.abc.net.au. August 24, 2002.

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• I heard Joby Talbot's Hovercraft piece for orchestra and felt its immediate physical impact - visceral, unsettling, hungry and direct. These short five minutes became our keystone to unlocking a strangely seductive score that tensions the aggressive force of the White Stripes with the enigmatic beauty of Talbot's own compositions.

  Wayne McGregor

  White, Impact, Seductive

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