Quotes on Composer

Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived... I would uncover my head and kneel down on his tomb.

Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

Composers and musicians have always starved and, as this is a sentimental country, we think the tradition should be continued.

In my view, the composer,_x000D_ just as the poet, the sculptor or the painter,_x000D_ is in duty bound to serve Man, the people._x000D_ He must beautify life and defend it._x000D_ He must be a citizen first and foremost,_x000D_ so that his art might consciously extol human life_x000D_ and lead man to a radiant future.

Good composers don't borrow, they steal

The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.

I will gladly give lessons as a favor, particularly when I see that my student has talent, inclination, and anxiety to learn; but to be obliged to go to a house at a certain hour, or to have to wait at home for a pupil, is what I cannot do, no matter how much money it may bring me in. . . I am a composer and was born to be a Kapellmeister. I neither can nor ought to bury the talent for composition with which God in his goodness has so richly endowed me. . .

I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

The highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist, is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may.

More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers compose unintelligible music is that people should admire what they cannot understand; indeed, admire that which has no meaning or principle.

Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music.

Love is the keynote, Joy is the music, Knowledge is the performer, the Infinite All is the composer and audience.

I believe that traditional wisdom is incomplete. A composer can have all the talent of Mozart and a passionate desire to succeed, but if he believes he cannot compose music, he will come to nothing. He will not try hard enough. He will give up too soon when the elusive right melody takes too long to materialize.

Music, being identical with heaven, isn't a thing of momentary thrills, or even hourly ones. It's a condition of eternity.

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.

Truly there would be reason to go mad were it not for music.

The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.

Everything we do is music." (Classical Composer)(From: 4'33")

I couldn't say I ever dreamt of becoming a composer, a pianist, or anything else for that matter. I have the kind of brain where nothing is set in stone.