Composer famous quotes

Since Mozart's day composers have learned the art of making music throatily and palpitatingly sexual.
-- Aldous Huxley

#Music #Art #Composer

I always work with the same composer, his name is Ali Helnwein. I don't have a musical background.
-- Alex Prager

#Names #Musical #Composer

I am but an architectural composer.
-- Alexander Jackson Davis

#Architecture #Composer

Do you know that my very first experience as a composer was a 'Concerto for Accordion?
-- Alfred Schnittke

#Firsts #Composer #Accordions

Composers are always going back to the past.
-- Anne Dudley

#Past #Composer

Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary.
-- Anton Rubinstein

#Thinking #Composer #Call Me

The composers could no longer direct all performances in person, and so the responsibility of interpreting their works in the spirit in which they had been conceived was placed upon conductors.
-- Anton Seidl

#Responsibility #Spirit #Composer

Composers are not all good conductors.
-- Anton Seidl

#Composer #Conductor

I cannot listen to Beethoven or Mahler or Chopin or Bach when I write because those composers require you stop what you are doing and listen.
-- Antonio Damasio

#Writing #Mahler #Composer

The first requirement for a composer is to be dead.
-- Arthur Honegger

#Requirements #Firsts #Composer

The modern composer is a madman who persists in manufacturing an article which nobody wants.
-- Arthur Honegger

#Want #Modern #Composer

It's hard to decide how to match words to music. It's not like it's twice the work. It's always difficult for me to explain to the composer what I'm looking for. I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music
-- Ayumi Hamasaki

#Writing #Composer #Difficult

The model of a composer.
-- Benjamin Britten

#Music #Composer #Models

Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries.
-- Brian Ferneyhough

#Arguing #Century #Composer

Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.
-- Brian Greene

#Avant Garde #Composer #Mathematician

The composers hated me. The singers detested me. The guitarists were terrified by me.
-- Bulat Okudzhava

#Singers #Composer #Hated

Most of the important composers in our country are clustered in the Northeast.
-- Carlisle Floyd

#Country #Important #Composer

We consider Monteverdi the first composer of opera. There was someone before, but everything started with Monteverdi.
-- Cecilia Bartoli

#Opera #Firsts #Composer

It is conceivable that what is unified form to the author or composer may of necessity be formless to his audience.
-- Charles Ives

#May #Form #Composer

I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.
-- Charles Mingus

#Music #Spontaneous #Composer

Claude Debussy was a rare phenomenon a composer profoundly and subversively revolutionary...
-- Claude Debussy

#Revolutionary #Composer #Debussy

The modern composer builds upon the foundation of truth.
-- Claudio Monteverdi

#Foundation #Modern #Composer

Not all, but too many of the best writers, composers, and artists of our time begin to be acclaimed only when they no longer have anything to say and take to performing instead of stating.
-- Clement Greenberg

#Artist #Recognition #Composer

Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful.
-- David Del Tredici

#Energy #World #Composer

I've always been a composer dependent on texts.
-- David Del Tredici

#Composer

Im still getting used to being called a composer. A poseur, maybe.
-- Dhani Harrison

#Used #Composer #Stills

Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise.
-- Dmitri Shostakovich

#Worship #Despise #Composer

I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena.
-- Edgard Varese

#Hair #Natural #Composer

The present day composer refuses to die.
-- Edgard Varese

#Composer #Refuse

Many composers today don't know what the human throat is.
-- Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

#Today #Composer #Throat

If you're a composer, there's never a moment you're not working.
-- Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

#Moments #Composer

Jerry Goldsmith is the #1 composer working now. He's open to new ideas and always inventing.
-- Elmer Bernstein

#Ideas #Composer #Jerry

I tend to listen to the classical composers: Rachmaninov, Satie.
-- Enya

#Listen To Your Heart #Composer

The greatest composer does not sit down to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.
-- Ernest Newman

#Doe #Inspired #Composer

A good composer is slowly discovered and a bad composer is slowly found out.
-- Ernest Newman

#Music #Found #Composer

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Composer #Very Happy #Feels

A large part of my work has been collaborating with composers; I think we've commissioned about 140 pieces now, a lot of them percussion concertos.
-- Evelyn Glennie

#Thinking #Pieces #Composer

I think that one of the things that influences me most as a composer is to what extent I can deconstruct and reconstruct the material that I'm working with.
-- Fred Frith

#Thinking #Influence #Composer

Still, American composers working in France have had a pretty hard time.
-- Gavin Bryars

#Hard Times #France #Composer

I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.
-- Gavin Bryars

#Writing #Names #Composer

Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.
-- Gian Carlo Menotti

#Opera #Composer #Feels

My dream was always to be a composer, but fashion came very easily.
-- Gianni Versace

#Dream #Fashion #Composer

I just have to take my chances like any other composer.
-- Gordon Getty

#Chance #Composer

The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.
-- Gustav Mahler

#Used #Composer

To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole.
-- Gustav Mahler

#Judging #Composer

I think a composer is always interested in his last work.
-- Gyorgy Ligeti

#Thinking #Lasts #Composer

The three greatest composers are Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. All the others are cretins.
-- Hans von Bulow

#Three #Composer #Brahms

There are wonderful composers and librettists out there. It's the lack of creative producers that is troubling.
-- Harold Prince

#Creative #Wonderful #Composer

I'm not an architectural composer.
-- Harrison Birtwistle

#Composer

In Hollywood, the rainbow hits the ground for composers.
-- Hoagy Carmichael

#Rainbow #Hollywood #Composer

Composers combine notes, that's all.
-- Igor Stravinsky

#Notes #Composer

Good composers don't borrow, they steal
-- Igor Stravinsky

#Stealing #Composer

Gifted women musicians and composers rarely received their due.
-- James Cook

#Musician #Composer #Gifted

I'm glad I won it because when I grew up the Pulitzer was the award that every composer wanted and I was like that too.
-- John Corigliano

#Awards #Grew Up #Composer

I have tremendous respect for film composers.
-- John Corigliano

#Film #Composer

I think it's good for the composer to teach because you always have new students and you have to begin at the beginning and make things clear.
-- John Corigliano

#Thinking #Students #Composer

Composers are the only people who can hear good music above bad sounds.
-- John Philip Sousa

#People #Sound #Composer

I hadn’t realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to somewhere even the composer hadn’t predicted. It left an imprint in the air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you went.
-- Jojo Moyes

#Air #Remnants #Composer

I write arrangements. Im sort of a wannabe composer.
-- Joshua Bell

#Writing #Wannabes #Composer

Nobody can give a good performance unless the authors and composers have written a good part, a fact which is often overlooked.
-- Judy Holliday

#Giving #Facts #Composer

I shall always respect the composer. If I embellish, it is his idea I am embellishing.
-- Kate Smith

#Respect #Ideas #Composer

Freddie Bryant is a brilliant young guitarist and composer.
-- Kenny Burrell

#Brilliant #Young #Composer

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.
-- Leo Ornstein

#Mean #Play #Composer

When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.
-- Leonard Bernstein

#Composer #Conductor

I'm not an intellectual composer.
-- Les Baxter

#Intellectual #Composer

I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work - the best and the worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively little.
-- Maurice Ravel

#Littles #Worst #Composer

[Composers] Mark [Shaiman] and Scott [Wittman] are unreal
-- Megan Hilty

#Mark #Composer #Unreal

You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is!
-- Michael Tilson Thomas

#Music Is #Composer #Your Favorite

Bernard Herrmann was a genius, a great, great composer.
-- Michel Hazanavicius

#Genius #Composer

The composer makes plans, music laughs.
-- Morton Feldman

#Laughing #Composer #Plans

You know creators, composers, need a palette for life, a color for life.
-- Mstislav Rostropovich

#Color #Needs #Composer

Music was not invented by the composer, but found.
-- Nadia Boulanger

#Music #Found #Composer

composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.
-- Ned Rorem

#Thinking #Distortion #Composer

If you aim at anything lower that is expecting your audience to be really alert and aware, then you're going to be caught out sooner or later as a composer.
-- Peter Maxwell Davies

#Expecting #Caught #Composer

I shall be the first composer in history not to have a biography.
-- Pierre Boulez

#Firsts #Biographies #Composer

Did I become court composer through masterful procrastination? Hardly!
-- Rachel Hartman

#Procrastination #Court #Composer

I was composing before I realised I was a composer. I mean it came more or less naturally.
-- Richard Meale

#Mean #Composer #Composing

I just scribbled away and eventually a C-major chord was there. I didn't ever decide I was going to be a composer. It was like being tall. It's what I was. It's what I did.
-- Richard Rodney Bennett

#Chords #Composer

I am an interpreter of music rather than a composer of it.
-- Sarah Brightman

#Composer #Interpreter

I have declared that I will work free of cost with those composers who are passionate about their work. Sohail Sen is one such lad, whose music in Banjaara has been liked a lot.
-- Sukhwinder Singh

#Cost #Passionate #Composer

There are no woman composers, never have been and possibly never will be.
-- Thomas Beecham

#Women #Composer

There are some composers - at the head of whom stands Beethoven - who not only do not know when to stop but appear to stop many times before they actually do.
-- Virginia Graham

#Music #Composer

I have written six symphonies, they are smaller-scale works. I seem to emit my themes, work them out, combine and intertwine them, and then come to a close. I usually feel that there are no superfluous extras, but probably most composers feel that way about their works.
-- Barbara Harbach

#Composer #Extras

Men have been in the forefront of music for centuries, and they have written glorious music, loved and appreciated by many. In some ways, men are still in the forefront. There is a lot of room for composers of all types of music by both men and women, nowadays.
-- Barbara Harbach

#Men #Appreciated #Composer

For my qualifying concert, Helmut Walcha would not coach Charles-Marie Widor or any American compositions. In his defense, his forte was Germanic composers, and his forte was really a fortissimo!
-- Barbara Harbach

#Composer #Coaches #Composition

The most important person is the audience and the composer. The rest of us - and even the composer is a servant to the audience. And of course, the audience is a servant to the higher art.
-- Dolora Zajick

#Art #Important #Composer

Human warmth is perhaps the most lacking in a composer who lives his life in a recording studio.
-- Fabio Frizzi

#Composer #Warmth

Composers often think in terms of music and not of an instrument itself.
-- Michala Petri

#Thinking #Instruments #Composer

To call somebody a Jewish composer is obviously redundant.
-- Mitch Leigh

#Composer #Redundant

I was in the army, and I had given up the thought of being a composer.
-- Mitch Leigh

#Army #Given #Composer

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

#Oblivion #Ashamed #Composer

It may well be that some composers do not believe in God. All of them, however, believe in Bach.
-- Bela Bartok

#Believe #May #Composer

The modern composer builds his works on the basis of truth.
-- Claudio Monteverdi

#Modern #Composer #Bases