Composing Quotes - Page 3

• Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Music, Writing, Thank God

  Letter to Ferdinand Ries, 20 Dec. 1822

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• It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful.

  Benjamin Britten

  Music, Beautiful, Musical Life

  Benjamin Britten (2011). “Letters from a Life Vol 1: 1923-39: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten”, Faber & Faber

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• The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music, Appreciation, Humorous

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

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• Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Inspiring, Art, Architecture

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

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• A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music, Jazz And Life, Doe

  In Peter Yates Twentieth Century Music (1967) pt. 1, ch. 8. Cf. T. S. Eliot 76:8, Lionel Trilling 218:1

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• Artists like Bach and Beethoven erected churches and temples on the heights. I only wantedto build dwellings for men in which they might feel happy and at home

  Edvard Grieg

  Music, Art, Home

  Edvard Grieg, Richard Yates (2010). “Edvard Grieg: 16 Lyric Pieces”, p.36, Mel Bay Publications

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• To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.

  Nadia Boulanger

  Music, Creativity, Breaking Rules

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• Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not. God knows.

  George Frideric Handel

  Music, God, Writing

  Of the'Hallelujah Chorus' in his Messiah. Quoted in Romain Rolland Essays on Music (1948).

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• BEAUTY will result from the form and correspondence of the whole, with respect to the several parts, of the parts with regard to each other, and of these again to the whole; that the structure may appear an entire and compleat body, wherein each member agrees with the other, and all necessary to compose what you intend to form.

  Andrea Palladio

  Beauty, Respect, Body

  "The Four Books of Architecture".

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• Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors - it's how you combine them that sets you apart.

  Wolfgang Puck

  Song, Food, Writing

  "Puck Goes Back to His (Ginger) Roots". Interview with Perry Garfinkel, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 3, 2012.

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• Composing is a natural fit. As far as the creative process goes, I'd rather do this than anything else, by far. Something different happened to me when I started to write music to images. It was a feeling of excitement and connection and a sense of being in the right place that I never had before.

  James Newton Howard

  Writing, Creative, Feelings

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• It is difficult to put into words what I suffered-the longing that seemed to be tearing my heart out by the roots, the dreadful sense of being alone in an empty universe, the agonies that thrilled through me as if the blood were running ice-cold through my veins, the disgust with living, the impossibility of dying. Shakespeare himself never described this torture; but he counts it, in Hamlet, among the terrible of all the evils of existence. I had stopped composing; my mind seemed to become feebler as my feelings grew more intense. I did nothing. One power was left to me-to suffer.

  Hector Berlioz

  Depression, Running, Heart

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• ...I think of improvising as composing - fo me it's all about playing melodies. When I improvise, there's not a lot of real thinking going on, per se - it's more like riding a wave. and I know how to stand on the board

  Robben Ford

  Music, Real, Thinking

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• When I am composing, the sounds are leading me to the way I want them to organize.

  Pauline Oliveros

  Sound, Want, Way

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; . . . the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression.

  James Madison

  Party, Majority, Oppression

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.47

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• I think [game music] is something that should last with the player. It's interesting because it can't just be some random music, but something that can make its way into the player's heart. In that sense, this not only applies to game music, but I feel very strongly about composing songs that will leave a lasting impressionWhat I must not forget is that it must be entertaining to those who are listening. I don't think there's much else to it, to be honest. I don't do anything too audacious, so as long as the listeners like it, or feel that it's a really great song, then I've done my job.

  Yasunori Mitsuda

  Song, Jobs, Heart

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• Composing on the typewriter, I find that I am sloughing off all my long sentences which I used to dote upon. Short, staccato, like modern French prose. The typewriter makes for lucidity, but I am not sure that it encourages subtlety.

  T. S. Eliot

  Typewriters, Long, Crafts

  T. S. Eliot (2011). “The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 1: 1898-1922”, p.240, Faber & Faber

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• There is no composing draught like the draught through the tube of a pipe.

  Frederick Marryat

  Smoking, Draught, Pipe

  Frederick Marryat (1873). “Jacob Faithful”, p.2

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• Composing is what I love most from what I do. Each genre has a unique expression that you cannot supplant with another. All the records co-inspire each other though they are not tied conceptually in any way to another.

  Serj Tankian

  Unique, Expression, Inspire

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

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• To visualize an image (in whole or in part) is to see clearly in the mind prior to exposure, a continuous projection from composing the image through the final print.

  Ansel Adams

  Photography, Mind, Finals

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• The Constitution of the United States was created by the people of the United States composing the respective states, who alone had the right.

  James Madison

  Patriotic, America, People

  James Madison (1859). “Selections from the Private Correspondence of James Madison, from 1813 to 1836”, p.119

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• The mad is either insane or he is composing verses.

  Horace

  Latin, Mad, Insane

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• If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

  Muriel Spark

  Death, Practice, Eggs

  "The prime of Miss Jean Brodie; The comforters; The only problem; The driver's seat; Memento mori".

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• Yes, sampling has changed not just my way of playing and composing.

  Klaus Schulze

  Sampling, Way, Changed

  Perfect Sound Forever Interview, www.furious.com. May 1997.

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• I've been composing music all my life and if I'd been clever enough at school I would like to have gone to music college.

  Anthony Hopkins

  Clever, School, College

  "Anthony Hopkins: 'I've never been really close to anyone'". Interview with John Crace, www.theguardian.com. January 23, 2012.

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