Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Composers - Page 20

In a broader sense, the rhythms of nature, large and small - the sounds of wind and water, the sounds of birds and insects - must inevitably find their analogues in music.

Musically I try to connect a common bridge between such exhilarating feelings as performing at the Acropolis, to the emotions each and every one of us feel everyday. In the end, a good melody will always stand the test of time.

When Philip Glass asked me if I would be interested in doing a new recording of Jesus' Blood he assumed that I would do something similar to the first version and wanted to know what other pieces would be on the same CD.

Having in my life been bitten by the jaws of both victory and defeat, I must rush to add that success is to failure as butter pecan ice cream is to death.

Music is, for me, like a beautiful mosaic which God has put together. He takes all the pieces in his hand, throws them into the world, and we have to recreate the picture from the pieces.

We're living in a time when pretty much anything can happen in the music world. There are a lot of musical languages in which people work. When I think of common practice I think back to the time I was studying the flute, where I learned that in the Baroque period many things were not notated, since they were understood - that was because of common practice.

Every single project deserves a different approach.

It it's true that fastidiousness and attention to detail is very much in my genes - if you knew my parents, you'd see that this is something I've inherited, only doubly so.

As I've grown - dare I say it - older, I had hopes of indulging my dreams of being a sailor.

Of course I have used dissonance in my time, but there has been too much dissonance. Bach used dissonance as good salt for his music. Others applied pepper, seasoned the dishes more and more highly, till all healthy appetites were sick and until the music was nothing but pepper.

The people wanted to believe that the Negroes couldn't learn to read music but had a natural talent for it. So we never played with no music. I'd get all the latest Broadway music from the publisher, and we'd learn the tunes and rehearse them until we had them all down pat- never made no mistakes. All the high-tone, big-time folks would say, isn't it wonderful how these untrained, primitive musicians can pick up all the latest songs instantly without being able to read music?

I think very abstractly when I'm writing. Then, as the project moves on, it becomes more like sculpting.

I'm musical in the sense that I can write a song, but I realised when I was learning the piano as a child that there were people who played it so much better.

It is curious to be treated by the old-fashioned people as a criminal because my thoughts and ways are beyond them.

The more I know, the more I realise I don't know. And the more I realise I'll never truly understand.

Today it's not culture; it's box office.

A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day's unity.

I think I'll give them another chance. Americans deserve another chance with my music.

I think my generation is a lost generation in a way.

Obviously in Art of Noise, I'm just part of the group, and when I do film scores, it's always in collaboration with the director and other people involved.

It's so important to me to make the music right that I didn't have time to be intimidated.

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

Movie music is noise... even more painful than my sciatica.

Bear in mind that you are not making music for your own pleasure, but for the pleasure of your audience.

IN trying to recall my impressions during my short war duty as an officer in the Austrian Army, I find that my recollections of this period are very uneven and confused.

Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.

The whole trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it over again and play it rather louder. Most Russian music, indeed, consists in ringing changes on this device, skilfully disguised though the fact may be.

Comprehensibility is the highest law of all. Unity must be there. There must be means of ensuring it. All the things familiar to us from primitive life must also be used in works of art.

Most gentlemen don't like love, they just like to kick it around.

There's a tendency for people in New York to think the world exists between the East and the Hudson Rivers, and I don't share that opinion. To me the world is a big place and I try to reach people everywhere. Listen, if I'm nothing else, I feel I've been a man of the people. I'm not going to pretend to be one of those snobby New York theater people.

Never let the horns and woodwinds out of your sight; if you can hear them at all, they are too loud.

With the coming of spring, I am calm again.

Most playwrights go wrong on the fifth word. When you start a play and you type 'Act one, scene one,' your writing is every bit as good as Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill or anyone. It's that fifth word where amateurs start to go wrong.

I wrote 'Threnody,' then I wrote several works where I changed my music completely.

Especially with iPhones, iPads and apps, there's just so much detachment that you're just flicking your fingers on a smooth surface to get the weather or whatever.

There's a lot of guys who have great technique, people practicing a lot and you hear them, but there's not that many people who when you hear them, you go, "Man, that guy must practice a lot," right? Then you hear Miles Davis play, and you go, "Man, I had a girlfriend like that." That's a whole another level of musicianship.

This taste of freedom is still bitter because left in Athens are my wife and my two children and because so many of my comrades are suffering.

I notice that so many of my peers, aging ingénues, rock stars, are moving along in life into their wrinkles with an adoring audience that's aging as well, and the plain truth is that I wasn't condemned by that because I've never had to be somebody to do something. I don't have a five year-plan. I just hope the phone will ring and it will bring an opportunity to dominate my life.

I am not facing the problem of emigration. I want my music to be acknowledged here first of all, in this country: after that, we shall see - perhaps the question will than become urgent.

At least I have the modesty to admit that lack of modesty is one of my failings.

When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love.

I prefer live musicians whenever possible. And I tailor the ensemble to what is appropriate for the film and the score I'm writing.

'Saturday Night Live' was actually started with a show that Lorne Michaels and I did at a summer camp called Timberlane in Ontario when we were 14 and 15. We would do an improvisational show with music, comedy and acting.

My pieces usually are programmed on concerts in which the other works are standard repertoire. My music always sounds very different when it's on a concert of all contemporary music. It always seems to stick out at an odd angle. This also makes me think of a question I sometimes debate with my friends: does the music of a composer directly reflect that composer's personality? This is a difficult one, but I think it usually does.

Concerts are dangerous because anything can happen - which is one of the joys as well.

What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music.

All genres of music have their own beauty.

Never let the demands of tomorrow interfere with the pleasures and excitement of today.

The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation.

From heav'nly thoughts all true delight doth spring.

No one should be allowed to make music as if he were made of wood. One must reproduce the musical text exactly, but not play like a stone.

"A creative life is not just for those fictional few who are "touched by the hand of God." We are all touched by the hand of God."

I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well.

I've got great joy from rediscovering Western music. I love Schumann and Chopin, and those amazing symphonies of Bruckner.

When you stop to think about it, so many films today where we don't have that kind of contact are films about alienation. About alienated feelings. We are much more alienated from our colleagues nowadays.

These two are not two Love has made them one Amo Ergo Sum! And by its mystery Each is no less but more.

Upper berth, lower berth, that's the difference between talent and genius.

The task is to influence and create a reaction in the audience. In my opinion, any reaction of a human being in the audience, I think this is great. It means we touched the person's soul.

I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me.

I've been pretty lucky to work with directors who were quite influenced by European cinema.