Composer Quotes · Page 21

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

— Evelyn Glennie

Almost all the producers I know and dig, like Quincy Jones or Brian Eno, are really musicians first. I'm a composer, an…

— Nile Rodgers

We are God’s gift to each other. Like a master composer, He brings all the instruments together, each with a different tone,…

— Anonymous

When we work on a piece of music, we'll often read the biographies of the composer and learn about what was going…

— Helene Grimaud

Perhaps the chief requirement of [the conductor] is that he be humble before the composer; that he never interpose himself between the…

— Leonard Bernstein

The September 11 attacks were the greatest work of art in the cosmos...compared to that, we composers are nothing

— Karlheinz Stockhausen

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

— Hans von Bulow

Horror allows you to do things as a composer than you're able to do in no other style of movie. The music…

— Christopher Young

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

— Dmitri Shostakovich

Even experimental composers, revolutionary composers, self-styled radicals are, in writing revolutionary music, recognizing the music that preceded them precisely by trying to…

— Leonard Bernstein

As far as being a 'player's player,' you've only got to go to Nashville or Argentina and you can forget about it.…

— Mark Knopfler

Bernard Herrmann was a genius, a great, great composer.

— Michel Hazanavicius

The modern composer builds upon the foundation of truth.

— Claudio Monteverdi

I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to…

— Glenn Gould

Alan [Ferber] is a great trombonist and composer. I'm thankful that I got some associations like that through peers and former students.…

— Jon Gordon

I hadn’t realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to somewhere even the composer hadn’t predicted. It left…

— Jojo Moyes

I think there's a time as a writer when you want to see the best things in life, and you go out…

— Tori Amos

I've always been fascinated by music and sounds. I was lucky to receive proper classical training as an orchestra player and I'm…

— Lior Ron

I had a really nice association with Richie DeRosa, a great musician, a great drummer and composer and arranger. And I had…

— Jon Gordon

The field of the novel is very rich. If you're a composer, you're well aware of the history of composition, and you…

— Salman Rushdie

I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly…

— Jascha Heifetz

I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

— Richard Strauss

You think about, like, [20th-century classical composers] Alban Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern sitting around in some living room in Vienna and being…

— David Longstreth

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

— John Corigliano

My interactions with musicians have been simply that: interactions with musicians. Issues of gender, or anything else beyond the music-making, have in…

— Michael Hersch