Nico Muhly Quotes

Composition is interesting because, in a sense, you always have to let it go. Unless you're a true composer/performer, you're always sending a PDF and then someone else makes it. It's like instructions for a short story, faxed to every English student who's studying it.

Nico Muhly

• Sense
• Composition
• Instructions

I think my generation is a lost generation in a way.

Nico Muhly

• Think
• Lost
• Generation

For me the best kind of film music is liturgical music. Liturgical music is essentially a million scores for the same film.

Nico Muhly

• Music
• Film
• Liturgy

When you're writing something new, writing something that's your own, basically you have nothing else to do except either invent a trick, use someone else's trick, or have no trick and get a bad performance.

Nico Muhly

• Writing
• Performance
• Trick

Whenever I get asked to write orchestra music or music that is for a lot of players, I try to make it a little sad.

Nico Muhly

• Music
• Sad
• Orchestra

I didn't entertain the idea that my music would ever become available in any of the ways that I had previously known music to be available.

Nico Muhly

• Music
• Idea
• Available

The score is doing a lot of work. It's like Wagner. It's like a yak carrying people.

Nico Muhly

• Work
• Score

My urge, when I go to the store, is to buy everything. And it's the same when I'm composing. My first instinct is basically to bring the whole store home, and not make a decision about how things play out.

Nico Muhly

• Decision
• Instinct
• Store

Writing orchestra music, you need for the emotional content to come from everyone doing everything together, adding up as it goes, a crowd mentality.

Nico Muhly

• Music
• Crowd
• Orchestra

I'm pretty clear about what I'm capable of doing.

Nico Muhly

• Doing
• Capable