Quotes About Composers

So many important New York musicians were gay, one wit dubbed the American Composers League the Homintern.

The relationships that we have with writers are quite a thing; they're different from the ones we have with actors or musicians or composers or politicians. Everything for me is the writer; without him, I don't exist. So he is first. The actor gets all the fame and glory, but I don't know about endurance.

If you are going to hear the work of the world's greatest composers, you will have to allow for a little murder here and there. […] Those who want justice can go to the police, but those who want something a little more interesting should go to the orchestra!

The structural thinking I use in the concert hall is unnecessary to most film projects, and most film composers make better use of the enormous range of pop and other materials and techniques required of them than I probably would, faced with the same challenge.

Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.

I cannot listen to Beethoven or Mahler or Chopin or Bach when I write because those composers require you stop what you are doing and listen.

Bach for minor crises. Mozart for major ones.

Sibelius justified the austerity of his old age by saying that while other composers were engaged in manufacturing cocktails, he offered the public pure cold water.

A régebbi zeneszerzÅ'k közül nekem Chopin és Schubert a legkedvesebb. Tudom, hogy a zenetanárunknak igaza volt, amikor Mozartot mennyeinek, Beethovent nagyszer?nek, Gluckot páratlannak, Bachot pedig hatalmasnak nevezte; tudom. Bach nekem mindig olyan, mint egy harminckötetes dogmatika, amely bámulatba ejt. De Schubert és Chopin két olyan földi lény, amilyen alighanem magam is vagyok.

We are co-composers of the universe. We are on-creators of the God that is creating us.

Many of the greatest composers and musicians do their best work in extreme confinement but we are seeing it in other fields - uses of technology to link people together in networks to solve problems and almost certainly we'll get better ideas than we would from them just doing it on their own.

Melody was banned from music by the composers of the avant-garde. I was unique among them in always using and writing melody and so I think this is why I've shared my music, why they can have also pleasure, not only an interesting structure.

I do think there is a valid reason that Segovia commissioned the composers he did. He was very much a pioneer, and what he wanted was a very listenable repertory. But I'm interested in different aspects of the guitar, and of music.

I think the reason composers aren't valued is because many act as servants rather than music directors. Instead of taking a stand based on their convictions, they sway to the opinions of others.

There was this kind of dictatorship of the Darmstadt school, composers like Boulez and Stockhausen, who were very strict and orthodox. They would not allow other composers to write the music they wanted to write, and only a certain kind of music could be played.

Right from the 17th century, composers who have taken up music as their means of livelihood went through a hard time financially. They were paid only for commissioned works and public performances. And, when their music became famous, orchestras in other cities and countries would pay a small amount to copy the music.

I've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.

Since Mozart's day composers have learned the art of making music throatily and palpitatingly sexual.

The corps of Great Composers who provided the works that are played here are all dead; living musicians may have their works played here from time to time, as a kind of courtesy, but it is the dead who command the loyalty of audiences, and it is their works that are played here over and over again with loving note-for-note accuracy.

Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully.

Today, the scope for variety has shrunk drastically. There are only a handful of topnotch composers like A. R. Rahman, Anu Malik, Jatin-Lalit... that's it.

I don't want any of my records to sound like one style throughout. That's why I choose different grooves and songs: tunes that are sensitive and slow as well as pieces that are abstract and fast. The approach I want to take with my records is to give the listener a variety of grooves, concepts, and composers.

My mother took me to Venice one time and showed me all the houses where famous composers used to live. It gave me a fascination for music and the city, but also for architecture. It was a valuable lesson.

These days music composers are singing themselves or making other male artistes sing. It is very tough to find a female single in a movie album and even if it is, it is just a female version of a song sung by a male artiste.