Composer Quotes - Page 14

• There’s no card, business card, better than a compact disc for a composer. It doesn’t half impress people and they get a long way on it ... these composers they will get more performances, more commissions, more recognition just by having that disc

  Peter Maxwell Davies

  Long, People, Cards

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• Seen from the point of view of the composer, the most nonsensical practice is that of casting people in musicals who are unable to sing. No one would cast a dancing part with someone who cannot dance sufficiently to come up to professional standards. The same is true of acting. But when it comes to singing, more often than not it is amateur night. . . . Either musicals should be written for specified performers in the first place, or they should be cast with people who are adequate to its dancing, acting and singing demands.

  Ernest Gold

  Night, Views, Practice

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• Music was not invented by the composer, but found.

  Nadia Boulanger

  Music, Found

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• the writer must resist this temptation [to quote] and do his best with his own tools. It would be most convenient for us musicians if, arrived at a given emotional crisis in our work, we could simply stick in a few bars of Brahms or Schubert. Indeed many composers have no hesitation in so doing. But I have never heard the practice defended; possibly because that hideous symbol of petty larceny, the inverted comma, cannot well be worked into a musical score.

  Ethel Smyth

  Emotional, Practice, Temptation

  Ethel Smyth (1922). “Streaks of life”

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• I'm really grateful. But I never had the rock star dream. I thought it would be cool to be a modern-day composer.

  Julian Casablancas

  Dream, Stars, Grateful

  "Great white hopes" by Ted Kessler, www.theguardian.com. December 15, 2001.

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• As a composer I might class myself as a Neo-Romantic, inasmuch as I have always regarded music as a highly personal and emotional form of expression. I like to write music which takes its inspiration from poetry, art and nature. I do not care for purely decorative music. Although I am in sympathy with modern idioms, I abhor music which attempts nothing more than the illustration of a stylistic fad. And in using modern techniques, I have tried at all times to subjugate them to a larger idea or a grander human feeling.

  Bernard Herrmann

  Art, Inspiration, Writing

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

  Elmer Bernstein

  Ideas, Working Now, Jerry

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• If I were to die tomorrow, I think they'd say Newman 56, composer of the hit song, Short People. Jumped off a mountain today.

  Randy Newman

  Song, Thinking, People

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• When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Conductor

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• Whereas most other modern composers are engaged in manufacturing cocktails of every hue and description, I offer the public cold spring water.

  Jean Sibelius

  Water, Hue, Cocktails

  "Sibelius: The Symphonies" by Cecil Gray, London: Oxford University Press, (p. 56), 1935.

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• The composers hated me. The singers detested me. The guitarists were terrified by me.

  Bulat Okudzhava

  Singers, Hated, Terrified

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• Freddie Bryant is a brilliant young guitarist and composer.

  Kenny Burrell

  Brilliant, Young, Guitarist

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• Tim Price continues to explore and develop his deeply personal approach to music. Through the years his persistence, determination and passion has enabled him to create a stellar reputation as a multiple woodwind master, composer, producer, author and last but not least educator. Tim is one of the best musicians active today and I'm happy to say he's my friend.

  Bennie Maupin

  Determination, Passion, Persistence

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• By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the texture of men's souls.

  John Galsworthy

  Men, Soul, Texture

  John Galsworthy (2016). “The Forsythe Saga”, p.306, Xist Publishing

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• A young pianist & composer who has demonstrated an exceptional creativity, in both his playing & his writing, as well as showing us all, his very strong commitment & motivation to aim for high musical goals. Talent like his is rare.

  Steve Lacy

  Strong, Motivation, Writing

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• I'm a fanatic about Irish music. I love its moody, modal and timeless quality. I'm different from some other composers, because I don't look at this as just a job. I think of music as art.

  James Horner

  Art, Jobs, Thinking

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• Creative force, like a musical composer, goes on unweariedly repeating a simple air or theme, now high, now low, in solo, in chorus, ten thousand times reverberated, till it fills earth and heaven with the chant.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Creativity, Simple

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.59

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• One yearns unspeakably for a composer who gives out his pair of honest themes, and then develops them unashamed, and then hangs a brisk coda to them, and then shuts up.

  H. L. Mencken

  Giving, Pairs, Honest

  H. L. Mencken (2000). “H.L. Mencken's Smart Set Criticism”, p.99, Regnery Publishing

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• Louie Bellson represents the epitome of musical talent. His ability to cover the whole musical spectrum from an elite percussionist to a very gifted composer and arranger never ceases to amaze me. I consider him one of the musical giants of our age.

  Oscar Peterson

  Musical, Age, Giants

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• In many ways I'm an experimental and new music composer that comes from a rural tradition rather than an urban one.

  Sxip Shirey

  Way, Urban, Tradition

  "Sxip Shirey’s Magic Journey: Sonic New York" by Holly Cara Price, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 18, 2010.

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• Especially on Broadway, composers and lyricists fretted over their creations, obsessed over every rhyme, every critical chord or interval. The stakes were so high. On Broadway, people were watching and judging, especially newspaper critics who knew a thousand ways to slice and dice a songwriter for the entertainment of hundreds of thousands of faithful readers. There was no anonymity for the Broadway songwriter. Even the best could find themselves stripped naked the morning after by the tastemakers and their readers.

  Michael Kosser

  Morning, Writing, People

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• If you're a good composer, you steal good steals.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Stealing, Ifs

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• I am convinced that each work of art, be it a great work of genius or something very small, has its own life, and it will come to the artist, the composer or the writer or the painter, and
  say, "Here I am: compose me; or write me; or paint me"; and the job of the artist is to serve the work.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Art, Jobs, Writing

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “The Irrational Season”, p.106, Open Road Media

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• Wagner exploited all forms of expression at a composer's disposal - harmony, dynamics, orchestration - to the extreme. His music is highly emotional, and at the same time Wagner has extraordinary control over the effect he achieves.

  Daniel Barenboim

  Emotional, Expression, Dynamics

  Interview with Joachim Kronsbein and Bernhard Zand, www.spiegel.de. June 22, 2012.

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• I've always had my ear peeled for interesting music. As a student, I regularly spent time hunting for interesting repertoire, looking through music bins, buying stacks and stacks of CDs, and discovering rarely played pieces by composers.

  Anne Akiko Meyers

  Hunting, Cds, Interesting

  Interview with Elijah Ho, www.thecounterpoints.com. October 16, 2014.

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