Composer Quotes
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I make me. At 18, I decided I wasn't going to have an unconstructed self ever. I was going to be the composer, the designer, the architect of me. It's been really fun.
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Any working composer or painter or sculptor will tell you that inspiration comes at the eighth hour of labour rather than as a bolt out of the blue. We have to get our vanities and our preconceptions out of the way and do the work in the time allotted.
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A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
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I guess, for better or for worse, I am an American composer, and I've had a wonderful life being exactly that.
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It may well be that some composers do not believe in God. All of them, however, believe in Bach.
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I shall always respect the composer. If I embellish, it is his idea I am embellishing.
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In another life, I would love to be the art guy - a production designer or a maybe even a composer.
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I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.
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I'm a composer, man.
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I can think and play stuff in classical music that possibly violinists who didn't have access to other types of music could never do. It means I'm more flexible within classical music, to be a servant to the composer.
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I'm not an architectural composer.
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That is basically me, and although I have done many things in my life - conducting, playing piano, and so on - what is fundamental is my being a composer.
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...stories about [the German composer Johannes] Brahms's rudeness and wit amused me in particular. For instance, I loved the one about how a great wine connoisseur invited the composer to dinner. 'This is the Brahms of my cellar,' he said to his guests, producing a dust-covered bottle and pouring some into the master's glass. Brahms looked first at the color of the wine, then sniffed its bouquet, finally took a sip, and put the glass down without saying a word. 'Don't you like it?' asked the host. 'Hmm,' Brahms muttered. 'Better bring your Beethoven!'
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Every orchestra I know, every opera house I know, is desperately looking around trying to find new talent, new composing talent, supporting young composers, supporting new ideas, supporting new ways of getting the message across.
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I've been called a minimalist composer for more than 30 years, and while I've never really agreed with the description, I've gotten used to it.
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Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary.
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Thrilled to be honoured by the ISM and to be joining such an eminent list of members who have received the Distinguished Musician Award.
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The first requirement for a composer is to be dead.
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I wanted to be a composer before anything else. And my sister was listening to Led Zeppelin in the other room! When I heard that, it was a game-changer.
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Mozart's job classification was to write music, which he did for ballets and operas. He got paid to do that, and taught on the side. He wasn't a waiter. He didn't sell mutual funds. Those are all noble professions, but if you want to be a professional composer, then you're writing dramatic music for film and television.
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The modern composer is a madman who persists in manufacturing an article which nobody wants.
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Man has used human rhythmic movement as raw material out of which to create works of art, as the composer of music uses sound, the sculptor uses stone and wood, the painter his pigments, and the writer - words.
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In any case, once you're dealing on a nonverbal level, ambiguity is unavoidable. But it's the ambiguity of all art, of a fine piece of music or a painting - you don't need written instructions by the composer or painter accompanying such works to 'explain' them. “Explaining” them contributes nothing but a superficial 'cultural' value which has no value except for critics and teachers who have to earn a living.
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Human warmth is perhaps the most lacking in a composer who lives his life in a recording studio.
