Famous quotes by Composers

"Essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything, just repeated patterns, musical patterns"

Terry Riley, Composer

"Out of doing all that experimentation with sound, I decided I wanted to do it with live musicians. To take repetition, take music fragments and make it live. Musicians would be able to play it and create this kind of abstract fabric of sound"

Terry Riley, Composer

"I had already done Rainbow in Curved Air and had a big record on CBS. I was launched to have a long career and then I just dropped out and went to India"

Terry Riley, Composer

"Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold"

Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer

"Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup"

Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer

"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour"

Gioachino Rossini, Composer

"Give me a laundry-list and I'll set it to music"

Gioachino Rossini, Composer

"Death is always around the corner, but often our society gives it inordinate help"

Carter Burwell, Composer

"There is not much irony when people are being happy on screen"

Carter Burwell, Composer

"I don't personally see my work as being dark. What interests me is a balance between light and dark"

Carter Burwell, Composer

"Even if I went off to some other career, I hope I would still be doing Coen films"

Carter Burwell, Composer

"Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding"

Gian Carlo Menotti, Composer

"All that is not perfect, down to the smallest detail, is doomed to perish"

Gustav Mahler, Composer

"Sound is the vocabulary of nature"

Pierre Schaeffer, Composer

"In Hollywood, the rainbow hits the ground for composers"

Hoagy Carmichael, Composer

"Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration"

Johannes Brahms, Composer

"The recollection of how, when and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters of the studio. I wanted to shout back at it: Maybe I didn't write you, but I found you"

Hoagy Carmichael, Composer

"I know Mother named me after a railroad man, but it's too late now, I'm afraid. Much, much too late"

Hoagy Carmichael, Composer

"Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"A person of any mental quality has ideas of his own. This is common sense"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"One bites into the brass mouthpiece of his wooden cudgel, and the other blows his cheeks out on a French horn. Do you call that Art?"

Franz Schubert, Composer

"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils"

Hector Berlioz, Composer

"Love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love"

Hector Berlioz, Composer

"I begin by considering an effect"

Maurice Ravel, Composer

"Easy mind, light heart. A mind that is too easy hides a heart that is too heavy"

Franz Schubert, Composer

"England is so defined, the class system, your education. I think what was unique about the Canterbury scene"

Kevin Ayers, Composer

"I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media"

Milton Babbitt, Composer

"I think that the basic philosophy was very good. It was just: be nice to each other, and don't step on other people's toes and infringe on their freedom"

Kevin Ayers, Composer

"There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between"

Thomas Beecham, Composer

"I also used these realistic sounds in a psychological way. With The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I used animal sounds - as you say, the coyote sound - so the sound of the animal became the main theme of the movie"

Ennio Morricone, Composer

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