Composing Quotes - Page 2

• However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons.

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Piano, Lessons, Piano Lesson

  16 Copy quote

• There will have to be times when I'm not conducting because I'm composing. I haven't solved that problem, and perhaps I never will.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  Problem, Conducting, Havens

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• Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

  Lukas Foss

  Creative, Age, Seven

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• Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house-the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.

  Benjamin Britten

  Bricks And Mortar, Fog, Color

  "The Classical Music Experience: Discover the Music of the World's Greatest Composers". Book by Julius H. Jacobson (p.341), 2008.

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• While it is true that Frank had a great sense of humor, he was also very serious about composing music. In reality there are only a handful of skilled players who can play his most complex pieces. It takes a lot of patience to learn and requires a fantastic memory.

  Dweezil Zappa

  Patience, Memories, Humor

  19 Copy quote

• You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.

  Maurice Ravel

  Ravel, Might, Firsts

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• Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.

  Giacomo Puccini

  Inspiring, Art, Inspiration

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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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• The most interesting aspect for me, composing exclusively with patterns, is that there is not one organizational procedure more advantageous than another, perhaps because no one pattern ever takes precedence over the others

  Morton Feldman

  Interesting, Patterns, Procedures

  Morton Feldman (1985). “Essays”

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• A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

  Frank Zappa

  Music, Writing, Air

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.162, Simon and Schuster

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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

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• Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Love, Marriage, Flower

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Metropolitan Opera (New York, N.Y.) (1971). “Chagall at the Met”, Leon Amiel Publisher

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• If it doesn't come from your heart, music just doesn't work.

  Levon Helm

  Music, Work, Heart

  67 Copy quote

• It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.

  Benjamin Britten

  Strength, Music, Beauty

  60 Copy quote

• The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself...Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel.

  George Gershwin

  Inspiration, Waiting, Doe

  45 Copy quote

• Whatever you do... put your heart and soul into it!

  S. Truett Cathy

  Heart, Soul, It Still Hurts

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• Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Spiritual, Doing What You Love, Making Love

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Metropolitan Opera (New York, N.Y.) (1971). “Chagall at the Met”, Leon Amiel Publisher

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• If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong.

  Simon Rattle

  Music, Piano, Composer

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• The only love affair I have ever had was with music.

  Maurice Ravel

  Love, Inspiring, Affair

  68 Copy quote

• If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Reality

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

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• Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

  Frederic Chopin

  Music, Art, Simple

  "If Not God, Then What? Neuroscience, Aesthetics, and the Origins of the Transcendent". Book by Joshua Fost (p. 93), November 16, 2007.

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• The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest.

  Erik Satie

  Inspiring, Animal, Musician

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• Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.

  Johannes Brahms

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Music

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• I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

  Richard Strauss

  Inspiring, Music, Second Chance

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• I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

  Elvis Presley

  Music, Witty, Humorous

  Quoted in Robert Byrne, The Other 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1984)

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