Famous quotes by Composers

"Romance is mush, stifling those who strive"

Billy Strayhorn, Composer

"In order to play and write it's unique - you either do one or the other"

Billy Strayhorn, Composer

"I don't hate work, composing is not work for me, it's my pleasure; it's my life. So why should I stop? If something is pleasurable and exciting and rewarding, why should one stop?"

Gunther Schuller, Composer

"You could say that everything the musicians have learned and known over the years, all of their technical resources, are in a dialogue with the things they are discovering every time, as if it was the first time"

Fred Frith, Composer

"One of the things I particularly enjoyed doing was taking raw sound from locations during the film, like the candy machine, and writing pieces of music to go with them, which is totally unnecessary within the context of the film, because they have their own logic"

Fred Frith, Composer

"As an improviser I'm now pretty comfortable with trios, so I'm thinking of working up to quartets"

Fred Frith, Composer

"I would like to read some books: I don't have time; I would like to continue working on my autobiography"

Gunther Schuller, Composer

"Because I have sixty years of being a professional composer, conductor, musician, whatever, and you develop a lot of friendships and you get involved with a lot of sort of long-term commitments and obligations"

Gunther Schuller, Composer

"We played some gigs in Switzerland a couple of weeks ago, and it was the first time I really felt the group was really a band in the sense of something I could write for"

Fred Frith, Composer

"The totality of a record is usually beyond one's ability to imagine when you start working on it, but the component parts are, usually, fairly clear one way or another"

Fred Frith, Composer

"I remember playing football dressed in peculiar costumes with some friends in France and laughing so hard we couldn't even stand up, let alone kick the ball"

Fred Frith, Composer

"Chris Cutler was kind enough to offer his company as an umbrella, so now I can have all my back catalogue under one roof, as it were, and it has the same feeling as with Daniel; this is a matter between friends rather than businessmen"

Fred Frith, Composer

"When you stop to think about it, so many films today where we don't have that kind of contact are films about alienation. About alienated feelings. We are much more alienated from our colleagues nowadays"

Elmer Bernstein, Composer

"I would not say that I was, these days, a 'student' of philosophy, although in my youth I was quite deeply involved with certain aspects of the British pragmatists"

Brian Ferneyhough, Composer

"Actually, most things I say in public lead more or less directly to my own compositional practice, so I should be careful about generalizing lest they come back to haunt me"

Brian Ferneyhough, Composer

"It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely"

Cole Porter, Composer

"Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... Anything goes"

Cole Porter, Composer

"So: we're all tired. Now what? Manuscripts written in Club Med?"

Brian Ferneyhough, Composer

"Other composers have taken this particular technique much further than I in the meantime, with the result that the Law of Diminishing Returns has begun to apply"

Brian Ferneyhough, Composer

"If the work of art is to continue pursuing the vision of both being in and of the world, but nevertheless in some fashion being more than just one more object to the mounting clutter, this is the specific point, I think, where this must be assured"

Brian Ferneyhough, Composer

"I am certainly not arguing for the de facto autonomy of the individual work, even though there is much to be said for making the attempt to see it in that light as one facet of the reception process"

Brian Ferneyhough, Composer

"Hence my obstinate emphasis on stylistic continuity from work to work rather than specific sibling relationships between the individual work and other members of its stylistic 'family' in the world outside"

Brian Ferneyhough, Composer

"Divine fires do not blaze each day, but an artist functions in their afterglow, hoping for their recurrence"

Ned Rorem, Composer

"Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist"

Ned Rorem, Composer

"My friends, who sleep for all eternity; we do not forget you"

Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Composer

"Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin"

Ned Rorem, Composer

"You know, I'm not gonna take my money with me to heaven or hell, wherever I'm going. So I want to do something good with it even though my means are very limited. I'm no millionaire!"

Gunther Schuller, Composer

"As long as I'm healthy and can keep going, that's what I'll do"

Gunther Schuller, Composer

"So this anchoring in some way, in some important way, in the past without repeating the past, but on the basis of the past, building something new: that is what is important"

Gunther Schuller, Composer

"After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz"

Gunther Schuller, Composer

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