Composer Quotes
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I'm not an original composer. The tunes are not stolen from other tunes necessarily except in a few cases, but they're in the style of songs that I grew up with.
Tom Lehrer
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I've always loved opera; it never occurred to me that I would write a proper libretto. One of my closest friends is a composer, Paul Moravec, and a few years ago, Paul and I were at lunch, and I said to him, "you really have to write an opera." So, he says very casually to me, "I'll do it if you write the libretto." Well, little did I know that the within a couple of years we would end up getting a commission from the Santa Fe Opera to write an opera together, "The Letter," which turned out to be the most successful commissioned opera in the history of the Santa Fe Opera.
Terry Teachout
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What gives Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great expressive composers never sacrificed form to expression.
Camille Saint-Saens
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Songs give you incredible opportunity to convey a tremendous amount in a relatively short period of time. The first thing that John Powell, our composer, says is, "Is the song engaging you to tap your toe?" If you're not tapping your toe, it doesn't matter what you're doing in the song, it's not going to work. But, if you can get the audience to be engaged by the song, then it gives you the opportunity to accomplish so much, in a very concise way.
Christopher Meledandri
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Seen from the point of view of the composer, the most nonsensical practice is that of casting people in musicals who are unable to sing. No one would cast a dancing part with someone who cannot dance sufficiently to come up to professional standards. The same is true of acting. But when it comes to singing, more often than not it is amateur night. . . . Either musicals should be written for specified performers in the first place, or they should be cast with people who are adequate to its dancing, acting and singing demands.
Ernest Gold
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Salieri was a pupil of Gluck. He was born in Italy in 1750 and died in Vienna in 1825. He left Italy when he was 16 and spent most of his life in Vienna. He's the key composer between classic music and romantic music. Beethoven was the beginning of romantic music, and he was the teacher of Beethoven and Schubert.
Cecilia Bartoli
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It's not a special taste. An American composer should have something to say to a cab driver.
Morton Gould
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Helmut Walcha was a gifted organist, improviser, and composer! He would play Evensong every week at his church for free, the Dreikönigskirche in Frankfurt, where the audience would consist of only six or so of us students. When he would give a public recital that had a hefty ticket price, the church was packed.
Barbara Harbach
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The greatest composer does not sit down to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.
Ernest Newman
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You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is!
Michael Tilson Thomas
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Classic music somehow changed, and it changed between the first and the second world wars, and somehow what happened was that the hero that had been the composer, the hero now was the performer, and especially the conductor.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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Even though, theoretically, being a composer and being a songwriter are the same thing, in my brain, they are completely different. When I am in my composing mode, I go into my studio and turn that part of my brain on like a faucet. And when I finish, I turn it off. But with songwriting, that process is much more elusive.
Michael Bacon
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The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.
Ernest Newman
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The artist must forget the audience,
forget the critics, forget the technique, forget everything but love for the music.
Then, the music speaks through the performance,
and the performer and the listener will walk together
with the soul of the composer, and with
God.
Mstislav Rostropovich
