1.
The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
John Cage
2.
I am composing like a god, as if it simply had to be done as it has been done.
Franz Schubert
3.
Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you.
Gustav Holst
5.
I am in the world only for the purpose of composing.
Franz Schubert
6.
There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it.
Clara Schumann
8.
All of a sudden it hit me - if there was such a thing as composing music, there could be such a thing as composing motion. After all, there are melodic figures, why can't there be figures of motion?
Len Lye
9.
What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized.
Gustav Mahler
10.
However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons.
Gyorgy Ligeti
11.
I began composing works which were imitative of the music I was being told about. I was also very interested in translating the music into visual terms.
Henry Flynt
12.
My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.
Alex North
13.
There will have to be times when I'm not conducting because I'm composing. I haven't solved that problem, and perhaps I never will.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
14.
Composing is not a profession. It is a maniaa harmless madness.
Arthur Honegger
15.
It's not instant composing; it's not following any kind of a formula. All you do is hear music in your head and reproduce it.
Lennie Tristano
16.
I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.
Christopher Hitchens
17.
The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it.
Steven Pressfield
18.
It is always the same with me; only when I experience something do I compose, and only when composing do I experience! After all, a musician's nature can hardly be expressed in words.
Gustav Mahler
19.
I knew I was going to be composing. It all makes sense in retrospect. But you don't know while you're in the process of improvising your life.
William Bolcom
20.
I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, "slow" would be the word.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
21.
All of your experience comes into play when you're composing.
Terry Bozzio
22.
I was composing before I realised I was a composer. I mean it came more or less naturally.
Richard Meale
24.
La dernie' re chose qu'on trouve en faisant un ouvrage, est de savoir celle qu'il faut mettre la premie' re. The last thing one discovers in composing a work iswhat to put first.
Blaise Pascal
25.
I'm composing more than before. I'm cutting down on conducting.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
27.
Composing is like making love to the future.
Lukas Foss
29.
The composition is the thing seen by everyone living in the living they are doing, they are the composing of the composition that at the time they are living is the composition of the time in which they are living.
Gertrude Stein