Top 104 Quotes & Sayings by Henry Mancini

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American composer Henry Mancini.

Last updated on September 16, 2024.

Henry Mancini was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flautist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.

American - Composer | April 16, 1924 - June 14, 1994

Source: Wikipedia

Technique is superficial. The method used in applying technique is what gives music its character.

Henry Mancini

I don't want to get corny, but my career really has been the personification of the American dream.

Henry Mancini

My father started me out on the flute and I began going to teachers.

Henry Mancini

Amplification of guitars revolutionized the popular music scene. Youngsters look for quick fame and big money with amplified guitars and working with rock groups.

Henry Mancini

I play citified Count Basie piano. As few notes as possible, my left hand in my pocket, that kind of stuff.

Henry Mancini

The most immediately gratifying thing about my work is conducting a large orchestra. But the long range payoff is composing because you've written something and it's there forever.

Henry Mancini

I'm usually the last man on the totem pole. Except for the sound effects and the final sound mix, the score is the last element to be added to a picture.

Henry Mancini

A good theme - like the 'Pink Panther' or 'Baby Elephant Walk' - can work all the way through the picture, which is what I did with them. So, for me, a good melody is not just a pretty tune.

Henry Mancini

I've had pieces in my catalog that kind of amble along, that really never go anywhere, but are known and liked.

Henry Mancini

You're molded by the period you were brought up in.

Henry Mancini

I find I work best as a reactor, trying to portray something on a screen musically. If I were a boxer, I'd be a counter-puncher.

Henry Mancini

I used to raise the devil when my father made me practice the flute and my mother made me take piano lessons.

Henry Mancini

I became a melodic writer after 'Gunn.'

Henry Mancini

I don't like to surprise anyone with the music I compose for a film. That way, there is less trouble later on.

Henry Mancini

Some of the prettiest music I've done was in films that really were not a smash. Your music fares as the film does.

Henry Mancini

I was always trying to be a quote, unquote, film composer.

Henry Mancini

Music is constantly developing and changing.

Henry Mancini

I don't think I've ever spent more than an hour on any one song, but that doesn't count the thinking that goes on beforehand.

Henry Mancini

If a film is not doing well, a record company will not take a chance with the score.

Henry Mancini

Bassoon is not an easy instrument to play and to pick it up and play it like a flute or a saxophone is quite an accomplishment.

Henry Mancini

I wanted to write picture music ever since I was a kid.

Henry Mancini

I would like a shot at Broadway.

Henry Mancini

I read magazines and reviews. If consensus says something is good, I'll get it and see what's going on.

Henry Mancini

Music has been taken over in this country by personalities and dominated by rock 'n' roll. There's been a synthesizer invasion and it's not going to go away.

Henry Mancini

Success is not usually easy or fast.

Henry Mancini

Stravinsky influenced film music in general - those stabbing chords and rhythms from 'The Rite of Spring.'

Henry Mancini

I wanted to be up there with all those names like Max Steiner.

Henry Mancini

I don't know if I've ever written a song that wasn't on assignment.

Henry Mancini

I just love what I do.

Henry Mancini

The great thing about a record is it frees your imagination; it gives your eyes a rest and lets your mind wander. There's the special thing that each record can mean a different thing to every person listening to it.

Henry Mancini

I've never gone to a singer with a song and said 'why don't you try this?' or tried to get a record like that. My head just wasn't there.

Henry Mancini

I try to change my concert program every couple of years - hopefully to keep my listeners interested.

Henry Mancini

Well, I thought the opening of 'Hatari!' was pretty good. And 'The Pink Panther' wasn't half bad either.

Henry Mancini

In the mid-1930s, a lot of the Big Bands sounded the same.

Henry Mancini

Getting married in 1947 and settling down in Hollywood was the real beginning of my career.

Henry Mancini

Getting out and being able to present a concert is invigorating.

Henry Mancini

I don't pretend to want to write the Great American Symphony.

Henry Mancini

In 'Charade,' there was a big fight. George Kennedy was playing one of his first big heavy roles; he had a hook for a hand, and he was real ugly. Cary Grant was Cary Grant. They were on a slanted roof, a very exciting fight, and we agreed there shouldn't be any music, just the grunts and the action.

Henry Mancini

It takes different mindsets to do different things.

Henry Mancini

I'm no songwriter because all of my popular songs have just been outgrowths of themes for the various pictures.

Henry Mancini

Some scenes cry out for a certain kind of treatment. The kind we're conditioned by years of film-watching to expect.

Henry Mancini

I just think the time and where I was brought up had a great deal to do in giving me the ambition to kind of get out and do something and not go into the steel mill.

Henry Mancini

You can make or break a picture in the dubbing room.

Henry Mancini

Film music, over the years, has taken from everybody.

Henry Mancini

I had no idea 'Moon River' would do so well. I was too busy working to think about it.

Henry Mancini

If you call making people smile with 'The Pink Panther,' then I made a contribution.

Henry Mancini

I used to be selected for the Pennsylvania all-state orchestra. It was a thrill to go from my home town of Aliquippa clear across the state to Lancaster for the concerts. No kid is immune to that kind of experience.

Henry Mancini

Sometimes people can see a movie of mine and not know until the credits roll that I wrote the score. That makes me feel good, that I can get out of that box every once in a while.

Henry Mancini

Oh, I'd been writing cartoonish music pretty much all along.

Henry Mancini

If I'm writing songs for a country-Western picture, I have to know about country music.

Henry Mancini

Some producers hang-on to that old cliche that if the audience hears the music, it is no good. I say this is so much talk. Music gives the film another dimension, if it's done with the story in mind.

Henry Mancini

As a screen composer or film-music writer, I need something that I can work with in the body of the score. Like 'Charade,' 'Moon River,' 'Wine and Roses,' 'Dear Heart' - they were all just themes that grew out of the picture.

Henry Mancini

Too many schools across the country have cut back heavily on their music curricula.

Henry Mancini

You know, my career hasn't exactly been the sort of thing that usually happens to film composers, but I sure am glad it happened to me.

Henry Mancini

Themes on some TV shows are overdone. That 'Playhouse 90' theme music was an example.

Henry Mancini

When I first began to work in pictures I tried to attract the attention of film critics, but I don't make movies to please them or myself anymore. I look for material that will entertain.

Henry Mancini

You know, directors are funny people. They live with these movies for a year or more. And when you go in to score the picture, you're fooling with their child. They want to know everything that happens to the score - and why.

Henry Mancini

When someone asks me to do a score, I look at the picture two or three times. I never watch the rushes to pick up the mood as quickly as I can. If it's something I want to do, just watching the film will start the wheels turning.

Henry Mancini

Broadway is intimidating. Don't think it's not.

Henry Mancini

I've turned down many pictures, mostly because I didn't like them.

Henry Mancini