Composing Quotes - Page 8

• Composing is not a profession. It is a maniaa harmless madness.

  Arthur Honegger

  Madness, Profession

  1951 I Am a Composer.

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• From an outsider's perspective, it's amazing what [Clint Eastwood] does. If he's not directing a film, he's acting in it, or rather he's composing the music for that film. His commitment to what he does is astounding for all of us to witness. It's inspiring, actually.

  Leonardo DiCaprio

  Commitment, Perspective, Acting

  "Clint Eastwood, Leonardo DiCaprio Interview, J Edgar". MoviesOnline Interview, www.moviesonline.ca. November 2011.

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• The next time you see a person with a composed face and a soft voice, remember that inside her mind she might be solving an equation, composing a sonnet, designing a hat. She might, that is, be deploying the power of quiet.

  Susan Cain

  Voice, Design, Mind

  Susan Cain (2012). “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking”, p.266, Broadway Books

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• Although I don't know Paul McCartney, a mutual friend told me that Paul was reading my book, This Is Your Brain on Music, and stopped after chapter two. McCartney said he was concerned that if he learned more about how he does what he does (as far as composing music), he may not be able to do it anymore!

  Daniel Levitin

  Book, Reading, Two

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• Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem per se, the circumstance ... which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Rose, Taste, Firsts

  Edgar Allan Poe (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Illustrated)”, p.1283, Delphi Classics

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• Beyond the formative effects of reading on the individuals composing society, the fact that they have read the same books gives them experiences and ideas in common. These constitute a kind of shorthand of ideas which helps make communication quicker and more efficient. That is what we mean when we say figuratively of another person, We speak the same language.

  Charles Scribner IV

  Book, Communication, Reading

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• I've always loved music. I wasn't one of those "composing since I was five" kids, but I was definitely involved with music since I was that age - singing in musicals and taking lessons. Lots of lessons! Singing, dancing, acting, drums set. My mom pretty much had a full-time job carting me all over town six days a week.

  Jason Graves

  Mom, Jobs, Kids

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• I would love to compose more fantasy music, whether it's for a film or a game. That genre has so much opportunity for harmonic experimentation, not to mention all the interesting instruments that become available when composing music for alien species and other worlds.

  Jason Graves

  Opportunity, Other Worlds, Games

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• I'm composing and writing music.

  Anthony Hopkins

  Writing, Writing Music

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• Final Satyagraha is inconceivable without an honorable peace between the several communities composing the Indian nation.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Community, India, Finals

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• Shook is the musical universe I created. I come from a classical and jazz background and my father is a jazz pianist, so my world bears largely the marks of this influence. As a sort of gateway, I started composing my own music on the computer at the age of 13. Before Shook, I had not yet discovered the kind of music I wanted to dedicate myself to, so I did a little of everything.

  Shook

  Father, Musical, Age

  Source: www.atickettosomewhere.com

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• I have been using the computer as a work aid since the mid-90's. It is extraordinarily well suited to how I think and work and has transformed my practice. Nearly everything I have done in the past 15 years would have been impossible without it. I use the computer for drawing, composing and colour planning everything, from postage stamps to paintings to architectural-scale installations.

  Michael Craig-Martin

  Past, Thinking, Years

  Source: briansherwin-artcritic.blogspot.com

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• A lot of young girls don't realise how diverse the career opportunities are in games development. Many think that you need elite math skills and a vast knowledge of all things tech to work in games, and haven't thought about avenues like design, producing, art, writing or composing.

  Rhianna Pratchett

  Girl, Art, Writing

  Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

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• I knew I was going to be composing. It all makes sense in retrospect. But you don't know while you're in the process of improvising your life.

  William Bolcom

  Retrospect, Process, Make Sense

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• Around the time of the Terran Caesar Augustus, a Martian artist had been composing a work of art. It could have been called a poem, a musical opus, or a philosophical treatise; it was a series of emotions arranged in tragic, logical necessity. Since it could be experienced by a human only in the sense in which a man blind from birth might have a sunset explained to him, it does not matter which category it be assigned.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Art, Philosophical, Sunset

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.93, Penguin

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• It was an interesting thing to do. Why did I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Book, Writing, Ideas

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.

  T. S. Eliot

  Creative, Toil, Sifting

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• When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides that, I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well; and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad.

  Jonathan Swift

  Cutting, Men, Clothes

  Jonathan Swift (1812). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ...: With Notes, Historical and Critical”, p.73

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• Composing is like driving down a foggy road.

  Benjamin Britten

  Bricks And Mortar, Fog, Driving

  "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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• I think of myself as a jazz player, and my music as a natural extension of the jazz tradition. What I'm doing is completely free improvisation ('composing in real time') with nothing predetermined. I've had a lot of experience playing many different kinds of music and several different instruments, and since I tend not to waste anything, it all shows up somewhere in the music I'm playing now.

  Richard Grossman

  Real, Player, Thinking

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• My urge, when I go to the store, is to buy everything. And it's the same when I'm composing. My first instinct is basically to bring the whole store home, and not make a decision about how things play out.

  Nico Muhly

  Home, Play, Decision

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, "slow" would be the word.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  Thinking, Would Be, One Word

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Every orchestra I know, every opera house I know, is desperately looking around trying to find new talent, new composing talent, supporting young composers, supporting new ideas, supporting new ways of getting the message across.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  Ideas, House, Trying

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I'm composing more than before. I'm cutting down on conducting.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  Cutting, Conducting, Cutting Down

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I'm trying to conduct only five months a year, and the rest will be composing time. I'm trying to spend as much as I can out of those months here in L.A., because for creative work, this is a fantastic place.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  Years, Creative, Trying

  Source: www.pbs.org

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