A Quote by John Cage

Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.

John Cage

Quote Topics

Being Composing Criticism Instrument Only Piano Practical Prepared

Quote Author

John Cage
American - Composer
September 5, 1912 - August 12, 1992

When we hear a Mozart piano concerto today, we're most likely to hear the piano part played on a modern concert grand. In the hands of a professional pianist, such a piano can bury the strings and the winds and hold its own against the brass. But Mozart wasn't composing for a nine-foot-long, thousand-pound piano; he was composing for a five-and-a-half-foot-long, hundred-and-fifty-pound piano built from balsa wood and dental floss.

Robert Greenberg

The only instrument I know how to really play, and the instrument that I absolutely love, is the piano. I have been playing piano ever since I have been 9.

Laura Marano

Did you know that the human voice is the only pure instrument? That it has notes no other instrument has? It's like being between the keys of a piano. The notes are there, you can sing them, but they can't be found on any instrument. That's like me. I live in between this. I live in both worlds, the black and white world.

Nina Simone

I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.

James Baldwin

I normally write on acoustic guitar, although piano is the instrument that I actually studied. Occasionally, I'll write on the piano or sometimes with no instrument at all.

Adam Schlesinger

I always tend to think that composing is not playing an instrument, composing is having something in your head that's steaming and it has to go out. It has to become sounds and be written. It's an emotion that you can't repress.

Alexandre Desplat

The only instrument I can play is piano. Whenever I make songs at home, I play the piano and make them on the piano.

Yoko Ono

I was 7 years old when I began composing. I began composing, improvising at the piano, the usual story.

Samuel Barber

It is only by demanding the impossible of the piano that you can obtain from it all that is possible. For the psychologist this means that imagination and desire are ahead of the possible reality. A deaf Beethoven created for the piano sounds never heard before and thus predetermined the development of the piano for several decades to come. The composer's creative spirit imposes on the piano rules to which it gradually conforms. That is the history of the instrument's development. I don't know of any case where the reverse occurred.

Heinrich Neuhaus

For me, the keyboard is always an additional sound to the piano. Piano is the main instrument; I can't go anywhere without acoustic piano. It's been my best friend since I was 6 years old.

Hiromi Uehara

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it's to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn't say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.

Dave Brubeck

The piano is an instrument I've always loved and so I taught myself. As a rapper, who wants to produce more, being able to play by ear helps a lot because I know where I want an instrument to turn or how I want it to sound without having to do too much work.

Santan Dave

Communists should set an example in being practical as well as far-sighted. For only by being practical can they fulfil the appointed tasks, and only far-sightedness can prevent them from losing their bearings in the march forward.