Famous quotes by Composers

"Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character"

Oscar Levant, Composer

"Schizophrenia beats dining alone"

Oscar Levant, Composer

"Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome"

Oscar Levant, Composer

"I am no more humble than my talents require"

Oscar Levant, Composer

"There is nothing is more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book, which, alas, musicians read but too little - the book of Nature"

Claude Debussy, Composer

"People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?"

Claude Debussy, Composer

"Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light"

Claude Debussy, Composer

"First of all, ladies and gentlemen, you must forget that you are singers"

Claude Debussy, Composer

"Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory"

Claude Debussy, Composer

"I love music passionately. And because I love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it"

Claude Debussy, Composer

"Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes"

Claude Debussy, Composer

"I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naive candour of a child"

Claude Debussy, Composer

"The century of airplanes has a right to its own music"

Claude Debussy, Composer

"In opera, there is always too much singing"

Claude Debussy, Composer

"Extreme complication is contrary to art"

Claude Debussy, Composer

"When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"There's something inimical about the camera and song"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"A close-up on screen can say all a song can"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"I was raised to be charming, not sincere"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?"

Igor Stravinsky, Composer

"Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?"

Igor Stravinsky, Composer

"You can't have personal investors anymore because it's too expensive, so you have to have corporate investment or a lot of rich people"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"My mother wanted me off her hands. She was a working woman. She designed clothes, and she was a celebrity collector. It's my mother's ambition to be a celebrity"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"If people have split views about your work, I think it's flattering. I'd rather have them feel something about it than dismiss it"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

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