Top 104 Quotes & Sayings by Henry Mancini

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American composer Henry Mancini.
Last updated on October 10, 2024.
Henry Mancini

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.

Technique is superficial. The method used in applying technique is what gives music its character.
I don't want to get corny, but my career really has been the personification of the American dream.
My father started me out on the flute and I began going to teachers. — © Henry Mancini
My father started me out on the flute and I began going to teachers.
Amplification of guitars revolutionized the popular music scene. Youngsters look for quick fame and big money with amplified guitars and working with rock groups.
I play citified Count Basie piano. As few notes as possible, my left hand in my pocket, that kind of stuff.
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.
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.
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.
I've had pieces in my catalog that kind of amble along, that really never go anywhere, but are known and liked.
You're molded by the period you were brought up in.
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.
I used to raise the devil when my father made me practice the flute and my mother made me take piano lessons.
I became a melodic writer after 'Gunn.'
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
I don't like to surprise anyone with the music I compose for a film. That way, there is less trouble later on.
Some of the prettiest music I've done was in films that really were not a smash. Your music fares as the film does.
I was always trying to be a quote, unquote, film composer.
Music is constantly developing and changing.
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.
If a film is not doing well, a record company will not take a chance with the score.
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.
I wanted to write picture music ever since I was a kid.
I would like a shot at Broadway.
I read magazines and reviews. If consensus says something is good, I'll get it and see what's going on.
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.
Success is not usually easy or fast.
Stravinsky influenced film music in general - those stabbing chords and rhythms from 'The Rite of Spring.'
I wanted to be up there with all those names like Max Steiner.
I don't know if I've ever written a song that wasn't on assignment.
I just love what I do.
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.
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.
I try to change my concert program every couple of years - hopefully to keep my listeners interested.
Well, I thought the opening of 'Hatari!' was pretty good. And 'The Pink Panther' wasn't half bad either.
In the mid-1930s, a lot of the Big Bands sounded the same.
Getting married in 1947 and settling down in Hollywood was the real beginning of my career.
Getting out and being able to present a concert is invigorating.
I don't pretend to want to write the Great American Symphony.
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.
It takes different mindsets to do different things. — © Henry Mancini
It takes different mindsets to do different things.
I'm no songwriter because all of my popular songs have just been outgrowths of themes for the various pictures.
Some scenes cry out for a certain kind of treatment. The kind we're conditioned by years of film-watching to expect.
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.
You can make or break a picture in the dubbing room.
Film music, over the years, has taken from everybody.
I had no idea 'Moon River' would do so well. I was too busy working to think about it.
If you call making people smile with 'The Pink Panther,' then I made a contribution.
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.
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.
Oh, I'd been writing cartoonish music pretty much all along. — © Henry Mancini
Oh, I'd been writing cartoonish music pretty much all along.
If I'm writing songs for a country-Western picture, I have to know about country music.
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.
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.
Too many schools across the country have cut back heavily on their music curricula.
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.
Themes on some TV shows are overdone. That 'Playhouse 90' theme music was an example.
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.
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.
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.
Broadway is intimidating. Don't think it's not.
I've turned down many pictures, mostly because I didn't like them.
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