Composer Quotes - Page 3

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Judging, Whole

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• I began like all composers, writing for small groups. Chamber groups.

  David Del Tredici

  Writing, Groups, Chamber

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• I'm not an intellectual composer.

  Les Baxter

  Intellectual

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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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• 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, Wanted

  "The Gospel According To John Corigliano". Interview with Frank J. Oteri, www.newmusicbox.org. February 1, 2005.

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

  Cornelia Funke

  Young

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• The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me.

  Michael Tilson Thomas

  Trust, Years, San Francisco

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• We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.

  Brian Eno

  Writing, Space, 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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• 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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• Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.

  Carla Bley

  Writing, Band, Talent

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• I find respect for a mediocre British composer, as opposed to a really good American, ridiculous because they automatically respect a composer if he's from England.

  John Corigliano

  England, Ridiculous, British

  "The Gospel According To John Corigliano". Interview with Frank J. Oteri, www.newmusicbox.org. February 1, 2005.

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• 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, Maverick

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• I dream of a collaboration that would finally be total, in which the librettist would often think as a composer and the composer as a librettist.

  Jacques Ibert

  Dream, Thinking, Collaboration

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• I still the love classic period, but also the baroque period, and even 17th-Century music such as the music of Monteverdi. He's one of the greatest opera composers. He was the one who really started the opera.

  Cecilia Bartoli

  Opera, Classic, Century

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• The first requirement for a composer is to be dead.

  Arthur Honegger

  Requirements, Firsts

  'Je suis compositeur' (1951) p. 16

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• Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Way, Form, Found

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• Perhaps two million years ago the creatures of a planet in some remote galaxy faced a musical crisis similar to that which we earthly composers face today.

  George Crumb

  Years, Two, Musical

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• I'm trying to interpret the film through the director's head, but it all comes out through me. So, a composer is kind of like a psychic medium.

  Danny Elfman

  Psychics, Trying, Directors

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• I would still love to do more Handel. I think Handel was a fantastic composer. I did lots of Vivaldi, but it's also important to do the music of Handel, one of the greatest composers of the 18th century.

  Cecilia Bartoli

  Thinking, Important, Vivaldi

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Used, Complexes

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• Sincere composers believe in God.

  John Philip Sousa

  Believe, Sincere, Believe In God

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• 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, Audience

  Charles Ives (2004). “Essays Before a Sonata”, p.36, 1st World Publishing

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• If a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?

  Charles Ives

  Love, Children, Nice

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