Composer Quotes - Page 2

• I am certain that most composers today would consider today's music to be rich, not to say confusing, in its enormous diversity of styles, technical procedures, and systems of esthetics.

  George Crumb

  Diversity, Confusing, Style

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• The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Real, Thinking, Awareness

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• 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, Call Me, Pianist

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• The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.

  Benjamin Britten

  Inspiring, Sleep, Writing

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• I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.

  Jascha Heifetz

  Writing, Play, Two

  1961 In Life.

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• I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Sound, Orchestra, Want

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• To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.

  Robert Schumann

  Inspiring, Art, Men

  77 Copy quote

• I probably belong to a type of composer of songs who keeps thinking about melody... I am old fashioned.

  Toru Takemitsu

  Song, Thinking, Type

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• 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, Teach

  "The Gospel According To John Corigliano". Interview with Frank J. Oteri, www.newmusicbox.org. February 01, 2005.

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• Every composer's music reflects in its subject-matter and in its style the source of the money the composer is living on while writing the music.

  Virgil Thomson

  Writing, Style, Matter

  Virgil Thomson (1984). “A Virgil Thomson reader”, Plume

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• Truly there would be reason to go mad were it not for music.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Mad, Would Be

  157 Copy quote

• That is basically me, and although I have done many things in my life - conducting, playing piano, and so on - what is fundamental is my being a composer.

  Morton Gould

  Piano, Fundamentals, Done

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• I'm not an architectural composer.

  Harrison Birtwistle

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• The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.

  Harrison Birtwistle

  Names, Giving, Influence

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• Like any other composer of opera, I choose a subject not for polemical reasons, but because it contains vivid characters in highly charged dramatic situations.

  Carlisle Floyd

  Character, Dramatic Situations, Opera

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• Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived... I would uncover my head and kneel down on his tomb.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Handel, Tombs

  Ludwig van Beethoven (2017). “Delphi Masterworks of Ludwig van Beethoven (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

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• I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Inspirational, Life, Wisdom

  Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft (1966). “Themes and episodes”

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• To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole.

  Gustav Mahler

  Judging, Whole

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• I like a composer called Henry Purcell, and I love to listen to Neil Young.

  Cornelia Funke

  Young

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• Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.

  Lion Feuchtwanger

  Writing, Historical Novels, Asking

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• I began my career with infantile dreams of becoming a composer.

  Ivor Novello

  Dream, Careers, Becoming

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

  Enya

  Listen To Your Heart, Classical Composers

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• America can well expect to develop a goodly amount of composers for she has a goodly number of people.

  John Philip Sousa

  Numbers, America, People

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• Composers love to write for symphony orchestras because the symphony is the Rolls Royce of musical instruments.

  David Del Tredici

  Writing, Symphony, Musical

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• 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, Performances

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