The composer...joins Heaven and Earth with threads of sounds. — Alan Hovhaness
I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son (W A Mozart)is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition. — Joseph Haydn
A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians. — Frank Zappa
A good composer does not imitate; he steals. — Igor Stravinsky
It's nice to have a great female composer in the program and add her color. — Cecilia Bartoli
Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle. — Thomas Beecham
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. — Johannes Brahms
Give Mozart a fairy tale and he creates without effort an immortal masterpiece. — Camille Saint-Saens
Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful. — David Del Tredici
Composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound. — Clara Schumann
A man like Verdi must write like Verdi. — Giuseppe Verdi
Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism. — Howard Dietz
I am composing like a god, as if it simply had to be done as it has been done. — Franz Schubert
The deaf man cannot hear, but he composes well. — Mexican Proverbs
Short Great Composer Quotes
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. — Gustav Mahler
Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise. — Dmitri Shostakovich
A creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one. — Dmitri Shostakovich
The final, unfinished fugue from The Art of Fugue is the greatest piece of music ever composed. — Glenn Gould
I still the love classic period, but also the baroque period, and even 17th-Century music such as the music of Monteverdi. He's one of the greatest opera composers. He was the one who really started the opera. — Cecilia Bartoli
Make today so awesome, yesterday gets jealous.
I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer. — Richard Strauss
Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers. — Brian Greene
I had great inspiration from a Japanese composer named Toru Takemitsu. He wrote over 90 film scores and a lot of concert music, a lot of classical music, and he gave me a lot of inspiration, as well as composers from other countries. — Howard Shore
Great minds discuss ideas.Average minds discuss events.Small minds discuss people.
A Haydn symphony had a meaning for the social group that listened to it. A Mahler symphony had a meaning for the man who composed it. Here is the difference between the classical and romantic attitudes to art. — Anthony Burgess
I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head. — John Fahey
I loved Hendrix. I mean, really, really loved him. As if he were one of the great classical composers. And he was. That's how I saw him. — Warren Zevon
For me personally - because I do it myself - the scoring of a picture is fun. I edit the picture and when I've finished I go into my room and I have many many records - jazz, classical and popular music. And I have this all at my disposal. I don't have to get a composer. — Woody Allen
Film Composer Quotes
With the new technology that keeps entering the media, film composers are constantly being placed in new learning situations. Acknowledging this and realizing that one must keep up, I maintain, nonetheless, that the real creative power is in the mind and heart of the composer. — Henry Mancini
A film just doesn't involve actors, a director and a producer, there is also the cameraman, the sound engineer, the music composer, the lyric writer. So many people come together to make a film. When we all feel satisfied with the film that we have created it's a win for all of us. — Aamir Khan
I'm not a frustrated concert composer, and the concert pieces I've done have been a small part of my work. What I've sought there is instruction, variation from the demands of film and relief from its restrictions. — John Towner Williams
Forever is composed of nows.
Film composing is a splendid discipline, and I recommend a course of it to all composition teachers whose pupils are apt to be dawdling in their ideas, or whose every bar is sacred and must not be cut or altered. — Ralph Vaughan Williams
My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan. — Alex North
When you're working in the [film] industry and you're working with people who are well known and are so regarded, you do just pick up on things. Seeing the way that people hold themselves and compose themselves before a scene - it's inspirational. — Asa Butterfield
Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
The art of making films is a collaborative art. As a composer, you're always working with the cinematographer because he's so much the heart of the world they've created on film. — Howard Shore
I'm a person of the arts. I love the arts very, very, very much. And ah, I'm a musician, I'm a director, I'm a writer, I'm a composer, I'm a producer, and I love the medium. I love film very, very much. I think it's the most expressive of all of the art mediums. — Michael Jackson
It all depends on the directors. Working closely with a director is the main job of a film composer. Interpreting what he perceives as a color, an emotion or mood is very abstract. A director tells you something he wants and then you have to run back... — Danny Elfman
I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigarette can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That's why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who are low mentally, because of social and racial conditions. — Harry J. Anslinger
Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces. — Marcel Proust
Acknowledge all of your small victories. They will eventually add up to something great.
In my study I can lay my hand on the Bible in the pitch dark. All truly inspired ideas come from God. The powers from which all truly great composers like Mozart, Schubert, Bach and Beethoven drew their inspirations is the same power that enabled Jesus to do his miracles. — Johannes Brahms
Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. — Matt Hardy
The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration. — Ernest Newman
You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.
I don't think they understand it's as important as math and science. It rounds you out as a person. I think it gives you a love of certain things. You don't have to become the next great composer. It's just nice to have heard certain things or to have seen certain things. It's part of being a human being. — Marvin Hamlisch
By recognizing that the chemical atom is composed of single separable electric quanta, humanity has taken a great step forward in the investigation of the natural world. — Johannes Stark
It's a great thing about being a musician; you don't stop until the day you die, you can improve. So it's a wonderful thing to do. — Marcus Miller
What gives Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great expressive composers never sacrificed form to expression. — Camille Saint-Saens
The reverie we intend to study is poetic reverie. This is a reverie which poetry puts on the right track, the track an expanding consciousness follows. This reverie is written, or, at least, promises to be written. It is already facing the great universe of the blank page. Then images begin to compose and fall into place. — Gaston Bachelard
To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most. — Michel de Montaigne
Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together. — Anais Nin
I really want to do the unexpected, and I think that's what I did when I executed 'Long.Live.A$AP.' I wanted people to really see the message and that I'm an artist who not only has the capability of rapping, but of composing great music both for people of my generation and for people with different backgrounds. — ASAP Rocky
Hanifs (Muslims) are stumbling, Christians all astray
Jews wildered, Magians far on error’s way.
We mortals are composed of two great schools
Enlightened knaves or else religious fools. — Al-Maʿarri
Tim Price is one of the real ones !
A good friend and a great player ! — Phil Woods
While it is true that Frank had a great sense of humor, he was also very serious about composing music. In reality there are only a handful of skilled players who can play his most complex pieces. It takes a lot of patience to learn and requires a fantastic memory. — Dweezil Zappa
That is the way a great master carpenter feels, or an architect or composer or anyone who creates anything - people want to be appreciated for what they have done. — David Amram
Being in the studio is okay but sitting in a room by yourself composing is a discipline that takes a certain type of mind set and Tommy has a great gift for that as did the previous guy. — James Young
... The 'cleverness' syndrome has taken the place of melody. It's like everyone has come down with this terrible disease in jazz....you are always expected to do your own material, which is a strange thing to do if you're a poor composer but a great player. — Keith Jarrett
I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life. — Gustav Mahler
I've worked with some of the great cinematographers. So I'm always watching what they do and I'm watching how the director composes his shots, just because I find it interesting as an actor; you're trying to help them out as well. — Eric Bana
I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work - the best and the worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively little. — Maurice Ravel
I think the thing's that perhaps sad really is that younger people haven't come in and I think it must have been absolutely fantastic to have worked in the 50's when you had all of the great Broadway composers and when West Side Story didn't win the Tony Award. — Andrew Lloyd Webber
When you have great songs that are going to live longer than the composers, everything you can do to bring those different elements and nuances out, serve the song — Michael Bolton
We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and our former riches. — Anna Akhmatova
I've got a collection of songs that I've had, I keep adding to and they're all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I've done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect. — Charlie Haden
You become a great composer when you win a Pulitzer. But I think that now it's a completely meaningless award. — John Corigliano
There is a celestial mind-force, a great sympathetic force which is life itself, of which everything is composed. — John Ernst Worrell Keely
Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners. — Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort
It was about finding creative, original musicians. Musicians who are strong composers. Flexible, empathetic musicians, who are great individually but who also have a great sense for cooperation and collaboration, great listeners as well as great players. — Joshua Redman
I usually work with the director and it's just a collaboration between me and the one person. I think you make good movies that way. If the director and the composer can have this common goal and this excitement about making something great, then you're going to do something good. — Howard Shore
It was new to play a woman who plays with her sincerity, and who is a seductress, a manipulator and a liar! I was able to compose a character as opposed to being very natural, so it was very interesting for me. It was great to realise that I could be this kind of real woman! — Audrey Tautou
The current transgender movement is composed of a great number of factions, divided by those old favorites of class, race, age, language, region, and nationality. — Kate Bornstein
Pablo Casals is a great musician in all he does: a cellist without equal, and extraordinary conductor and composer with something to say. I have been profoundly impressed by all I have heard of his work, but he is a musician of this stature because he is also a great man. — Albert Schweitzer
All great composers of the past spent most of their time studying. Feeling alone won't do the job. A man also needs technique. — George Gershwin
Society is not merely a select body of spiritual or intellectual persons, but a great organism composed of all kinds of members, a net containing bad and good. — Robert Hugh Benson
Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on his backside. — Ludwig van Beethoven
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
As for garden photographers, how differently they see things. With what ease the camera seems to compose a picture of great beauty with its discriminating lens. The naked eye can't censor some ugly sight on the periphery of vision; the photographer takes the perfect shot and picks for us just what we need to see. — Mirabel Osler
I have to say I owe my career to the master composers of the Great American Songbook who have written such high-quality songs - the best popular music ever composed. — Tony Bennett
All great musical composers have been connected, consciously or unconsciously, with this source of music-a fact that enabled them to become masters of their art. Their compositions contain specific messages brought through from high realms for the definite purpose of bettering world conditions and bestowing upon mankind greater illumination. — Corinne Heline
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