Quotes on Composer

A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.

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.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Remember always that the composer's pen is still mightier than the bow of the violinist; in you lie all the possibilities of the creation of beauty.

Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play.

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

Why should a novelist not also be a historian? To force unnatural divisions within the English language is to work against its capacious and accommodating nature. To expect a writer to produce only novels, or only histories, is equivalent to demanding from a composer that he or she write only string quartets or piano sonatas.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

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.

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking "Is there a meaning to music?" My answer would be, "Yes", And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be "No."

It is important for the musician to learn as much about the composer as possible and to study the music he has written. Then, even a short piece by Brahms or Chopin can be played with much more understanding.

I guess, for better or for worse, I am an American composer, and I've had a wonderful life being exactly that.

The thing that makes me want to write a piece of music is having something to talk about, you know? Something I want to get across. Because I'm a composer, music is my first language, and that's what I reach for when I want to convey something.

I think of myself as a film composer.

I don't ascribe to the idea of the ivory tower composer who sits alone in a room composing his masterpieces and then comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets. It doesn't work like that. The job of a composer is putting something down on a piece of paper that will inspire the person who's playing.

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

If I weren't a director, I would want to be a film composer.

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the texture of men's souls.