Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Composers - Page 19

I used to perform all the time but I haven't performed in New York in a very long time.

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.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

French horn can be very epic, and at the same time, very dark and moving.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

Ever since I began to compose, I have remained true to my starting principle: not to write a page because no matter what public, or what pretty girl wanted it to be thus or thus; but to write solely as I myself thought best, and as it gave me pleasure.

So, essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns.

I decided during my teens that I wasn't going to have the life of a concert pianist, much to the chagrin of a lot of people who had put a lot of money into me!

Everything lives and lasts by the inner necessity of its being, by its own nature's need.

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

Hopefully each film can be given a musical voice of its own, which is not to say that the instrumentation is always unique, but that the relationship between the sound and the image is unique.

I lived for art, I lived for love

I feel like people who actually know how music works on a technical level need to explain it to the rest of us a little more often.

The basic idea of a hyper instrument is where the technology is built right into the instrument so that the instrument knows how its being played - literally what the expression is, what the meaning is, what the direction of the music is.

The time was simply ripe for the disappearance of tonality. Naturally this was a fierce struggle; inhibitions of the most frightful kind had to be overcome, the panic fear, 'Is that possible, then?' So it came about that gradually a piece was written, firmly and consciously, that wasn't in a definite key any more.

A lot of modern film scoring is about a lack of themes, so I try to find ways of using music that doesn't necessarily have thematic material in it to make the points when there is thematic material even stronger. It's cool to be able to combine old and new.

I've never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.

When I came across something I liked, I wanted to find out as much as I could about it. This was as true of hearing Hoagy Carmichael for the first time as it was later when I first heard Boulez.

Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor.

I adore art...when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear.

Musicals are made of several climaxes that keep growing and growing; when you think it's over, it still continues growing up in plateaus.

I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself.

Plot is very important to me, but I think my stories are stronger in character development.

Most artists have experienced the creative block. We get stuck in our work. We beat our head against the wall: nothing. Sometimes, it is because we are trying something at the wrong time.

We play melodic music, we play songs, we play all kinds of things and when you improvise you don't just shut out different languages, you use all the languages that you have.

I would listen to something on the radio and try to tap out the melody, then the harmonies.

Becoming a father allowed me to become a much better composer, because it allowed me to have tremendous patience. I have much more tolerance for opposing opinions, short attention spans, changes of heart. And faith in the future.

Where Miles Davis can make you feel things.That's what I'm looking for from young guys. I'm looking for somebody who not just has a command of the instrument, but can actually say something to make you feel something, make you think about something.

I am thankful to all my fans and supporters out there for the overwhelming love and support. I just hope I continue to make music that is loved by everyone.

To have the ability to withdraw into oneself and forget everything around one when one is creating - What, I think is the only requirement for being able to bring forth something beautiful. The whole thing is - a mystery.

Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

I have my own definition of minimalism, which is that which is created with a minimum of means.

It is the melody which is the charm of music, and it is that which is most difficult to produce. The invention of a fine melody is a work of genius.

In serial music, the series itself is seldom audible... What I'm interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one in the same thing.

I see a parallel industry for independent music blooming alongside film music.

I've worked with the same Prophet 5 Synthesizer by Sequential Circuit synthesiser for 40 years.

The way that I got involved with microtonal music was, frankly, through jazz.

I have a Yamaha YC-45D organ in my studio. It's actually Terry Riley's favorite keyboard, so if you find old clips of him on YouTube, he's usually playing one of these.

You have to make an audience experience with the ears as well as their eyes.

For me, when I watch something without music, I'm instantly thinking, "Okay, what am I going to do here? How am I going to convey this?" I take notes and really think about that.

I consider myself a part-time worker when it comes to the piano, but you need to play regularly to stay sharp.

Yes, I'm a musician. I also like to play with others, sometimes more, sometimes less.

What was once underground is now coming to the surface.

I think music is all about team work.

It is still true that it is easier to compose a poem in the form of a manual for adjusting a VCR than it is to write a piece using just tuning as a symphony.

Some members of the Vienna Philharmonic convinced me to try Bruckner, which I have never done before. And that was interesting to me to have this experience with this orchestra, which knows the repertoire very well, and to be confronted with this knowledge, and to learn from them.

A great melodic line is like a person's soul, and coming up with an original melody, it can be like you are illustrating the soul.

I still do not know where the notes will come from when I accept a commission for a new work.

Computers are only capable of a certain kind of randomness because computers are finite devices.

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.

People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words.

My father, composer Sardar Malik, used to say that a good musician should always try to imbibe good poetry. One reason why today's songs don't have a shelf life is because of inane lyrics.

I want to become less and less about the laptop. That's what's lovely about an orchestra - the physicality, the way every gesture relates to something you're hearing.

To write music is to raise a ladder without a wall to lean it against. There is no scaffolding: the building under construction is held in balance only by the miracle of a kind of internal logic, an innate sense of proportion.

It's a great privilege and a highlight for choir and orchestra members to perform for audiences in live concerts.

Never be ashamed to write a melody that people remember.

I hated teaching composition. I was playing music I didn't particularly want to play, being on committees I didn't want to be on.

It is only comparatively primitive machinery that affords a stimulus, and there is already a faint period touch about Pacific 231 and Le Pas d'Acier. One feels...that Prokofieff should have written ballets about the spinning jenny and the Luddite riots; that Honegger should have been there to celebrate the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway and the death of Huskisson with a "Symphonie Triomphale et Funèbre".

This exploded in me almost more music than I could consume.