Musical composer Quotes

I was hired for a really excellent academic job early in my life;

I was twenty-five when I started at Princeton and I got tenure early on. I really didn't deserve this; I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

In your cells right now, an enzyme is making a copy of your dna in less than two hours, right in the nucleus.

This world is not my home, I'm just a passing through.

The best parts about writing a show are [its] first, second and 10th anniversaries. Everything else is relative levels of hell.

What brought me to Disney was the new regime, which is now the old regime, came over with Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and all these people really wanted to reinvigorate the animated musical, so they came to Howard Ashman and me. That was my entry into Disney.

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.

The score is doing a lot of work. It's like Wagner. It's like a yak carrying people.

I began seriously concentrating on music study after I entered senior high school. I went to a class in the arts section at the YMCA and learned music theory and composition. Today, there are many classes like this available, but this was not so much the case in those days.

These days people wallow in enormous masses of sound.

I really believe in melody.

I've had a lot of fun writing percussion music.

It feels quite similar to writing computer music. But I found myself in the role of choreographer in a way, worrying about physical movement and such.

The score must govern the music. It must have authority, and not merely be an arbitrary jumping-off point for improvisation.

When you're writing something new, writing something that's your own, basically you have nothing else to do except either invent a trick, use someone else's trick, or have no trick and get a bad performance.

I'm trying to phase out my availability on the phone.

People call you when you're walking down the street and say the most random stuff.

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

I can't say that there's a common practice that has to do with pitch language or with the way pieces are put together because today, anything is fair game. As far as I'm concerned, my own common practice is a piece that engages the attention of listeners from beginning to end, and doesn't rely on or expect the listener to zone out.

I feel that all good art is powerful and simple.

Because I had been in conservatory for so long, I was jealous of my friends in bands.

Art is art when it is appreciated by someone.

The only way we live beyond our lives is to connect and carve ourselves into the souls of those we love.

It's about one moment. It's about hitting the wall and having to make a choice, or take a stand, or turn around and go back.

Bear in mind that parts of the score may be devoid of direct musical relevance.

A Composer who hears sounds will try to find a notation for sounds.

One who has ideas will find one that expresses his ideas, leaving their interpretation free, in confidence that his ideas have been accurately and concisely notated.

The notation is more important than the sound.

Not the exactitude and success with which a notation notates a sound; but the musicalness of the notation in its notating.

This world is not my home, I'm just a passing thro', My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue; the angels beckon me from heaven's open door, and I can't feel at home in this world any more. 0 Lord, you know, I have no friend like you, if heaven's not my home then Lord what will I do; the angels beckon me from heaven's open door, and I can't feel at home in this world anymore.

If a man's religion does not affect his use of money, that man's religion is vain.

If music leaves any impression at all, it does so without regard to stylistic issues.

The Churches belong together in the Church.

What that may mean for our ecclesiastical groupings we do not know. We have not discovered the kind or outward manifestation which God wills that we shall give to that inner unity. But we must seek it.

Collaboration is being open to each other's ideas and benefiting from each other's perspectives in an open way. Collaboration is all about rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and helping each other to constantly improve a piece. And, it's also about spurring each other on to doing really great, hard work - it's easier to do it in a collaboration than on your own.

Having a tradition is a great thing to work within, and maybe today [it] is the only way to really land musically dramatic work.

I really said, 'Okay, this is just the right job for me.

This is really what I need to be doing: telling stories through music in lots of different styles of music.'

It is really amazing to be able to do cinematic, big feature style film music on a weekly basis and do it in LA, on a big scoring stage, on a studio lot, and do it with the right players and make it sound great.

I actually prefer to work in as many different genres as possible as often as possible because I actually think the best way to be inspired and avoid any writers block or things like that is actually to be able to go from a comedy to an action to a horror to a adventure, that actually makes it easy for me to start over and get new ideas, and it keeps things interesting.

I would say that I'm a really eclectic music lover, so I love the fact that one month I will be doing one kind of music and the next month I will be doing something very different and I think that really works for me in terms of my own personal tastes and styles.

My only real requirement is that I like the projects to be good and I like the people that I work with to be really nice people and great people, and as long as that's the case the music is fun to do always.

The things that are the hardest are the things that are due the quickest.

The more time you have the easier it is to come up with things and navigate. I think the other things that are tough are films that are very, very subtle. Where there are little tiny nuances that make a big difference.

I was always drawn to music. It consumed my thoughts and when I realized I could make people feel something through music that is all I wanted to do.

One of the great things about being on a show for a long period of time is watching the show evolve. A friend told me a long time ago "It should be easy" and it usually is if you're not distracted with the usual demons any creative person has. Especially with comedy because you find yourself laughing while you work.

Everytime I play something for someone there is an emotional thing that happens that guides me.

I've been very fortunate as a composer to be involved with projects that have really propelled my scores forward. I'm very proud of it.

I've always juggled a lot of projects because at least half the projects you do get shelved. So you have to do a lot of things in order for things to move forward.

If you write enough musicals you pretty much have a sense of where they should go, what you'll need, and when; how to pull people on that journey.

I don't write songs for myself anymore.

I only write songs on assignment. It's purely a business, but it is still so important to me emotionally.

To call somebody a Jewish composer is obviously redundant.

I think if you see that no one is going to laugh at you for it, I think the concept of living nicely will be infectious. I believe there is room for the absence of cynicism.

I was in the army, and I had given up the thought of being a composer.

I'm pretty clear about what I'm capable of doing.

For me the best kind of film music is liturgical music.

Liturgical music is essentially a million scores for the same film.

Even more than in the concert hall, in church there are things you can and cannot do, just out of respect. You would never have the sound of someone being nailed to a cross, or the sound of a child being born, because everybody knows the story. We know that we're meant to feel a complicated raft of things.

In really fancy restaurants they never point to the bathroom, they just gesture toward the bathroom or they'll lead you to the bathroom. The fancier the restaurant, the less pointing there is.