Composer Quotes

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

The terror of performing never goes away. Instead, you get very, very comfortable being terrified.

It may well be that some composers do not believe in God. All of them, however, believe in Bach.

Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful.

We consider Monteverdi the first composer of opera. There was someone before, but everything started with Monteverdi.

I am but an architectural composer.

To be a success as a Broadway composer, you must be Jewish or gay. I'm both.

Of all composers, past and present, I am the least learned. I mean that in all seriousness, and by learning I do not mean knowledge of music.

A lot of composers before me have been on this mission to change the world by getting off equal temperament, and I'm definitely one of those.

The greatest composer does not sit down to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

Händel is the greatest and ablest of all composers; from him I can still learn.

Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise.

Music was not invented by the composer, but found.

When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.

Freddie Bryant is a brilliant young guitarist and composer.

My dream was always to be a composer, but fashion came very easily.

I shall be the first composer in history not to have a biography.

I am a composer in search of oblivion; and I'm always slightly ashamed to admit that I compose.

A good composer is slowly discovered and a bad composer is slowly found out.

He's not a performer, he's not a composer, he's not even a musician, but Norman Granz is Mr. Jazz.

There are no woman composers, never have been and possibly never will be.

Gifted women musicians and composers rarely received their due.

A large part of my work has been collaborating with composers; I think we've commissioned about 140 pieces now, a lot of them percussion concertos.

Claude Debussy was a rare phenomenon a composer profoundly and subversively revolutionary.

The present day composer refuses to die.

The composer makes plans, music laughs.

I tend to listen to the classical composers: Rachmaninov, Satie.

You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is!

It is the power of music to carry one directly into the mental state of the composer.

The three greatest composers are Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. All the others are cretins.

I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena.

Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work - the best and the worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively little.

Composers combine notes, that's all.

Composers are the only people who can hear good music above bad sounds.

To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole.

Many composers today don't know what the human throat is.

In Hollywood, the rainbow hits the ground for composers.

The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.

I just have to take my chances like any other composer.

composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.

Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge.

I began like all composers, writing for small groups. Chamber groups.

I'm glad I won it because when I grew up the Pulitzer was the award that every composer wanted and I was like that too.

The modern composer is a madman who persists in manufacturing an article which nobody wants.

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

If you aim at anything lower that is expecting your audience to be really alert and aware, then you're going to be caught out sooner or later as a composer.

Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary.

I listen only to Bach, Beethoven or Mozart. Life is too short to waste on other composers.

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