composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations. — Ned Rorem Copy Share Image
Performing was always something that I actually used to do before I settled in the studio as a composer. — Ramin Djawadi Copy Share Image
The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. — Ernest Newman Copy Share Image
It seems at times I should be a composer of sounds, not only of rhythms and colors. Walking under the trees, I… — Charles E. Burchfield Copy Share Image
Well, let me, first of all, say, that as a microtonal composer, I've never been much of a theorist. — John Eaton Copy Share Image
I believe that interpretation should be like a transparent glass, a window for the composer's music. — Vladimir Ashkenazy Copy Share Image
There are wonderful composers and librettists out there. It's the lack of creative producers that is troubling. — Harold Prince Copy Share Image
The greatest composer does not sit down to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. — Ernest Newman Copy Share Image
Helmut Walcha was a gifted organist, improviser, and composer! He would play Evensong every week at his church for free, the Dreikönigskirche… — Barbara Harbach Copy Share Image
My mother took me to Venice one time and showed me all the houses where famous composers used to live. It gave… — Ben van Berkel Copy Share Image
The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel.… — Sergei Rachmaninoff Copy Share Image
I think the purpose of a piece of music is significant when it actually lives in somebody else. A composer puts down… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
Notes are part of life for any composer for hire. There's no way around it. I think anyone who has done even… — Christophe Beck Copy Share Image
The prerequisite of contrapuntal art, more conspicuous in the work of Bach than in that of any other composer, is an ability… — Glenn Gould Copy Share Image
This whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, “Is there a meaning to music?” My answer to that would be,… — Aaron Copland Copy Share Image
An artist makes something to be physically experienced by another person. It's a raw, freely chosen, interpersonal relationship between the maker and… — Philip Taaffe Copy Share Image
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… — Philip Glass Copy Share Image
Every music composer has his or her own distinct style. If I listen to any song by - say Mithoon or AR… — Ankit Tiwari Copy Share Image
Don’t be sad by what you see It’s true life has it’s miseries But one thing’s always worked for me Worry ends… — Sami Yusuf Copy Share Image
I think it's really the job of the composer, the artist, the painter, the writer to present people with options. I'm just… — Ian Anderson Copy Share Image
The great opera composers were so good at their job, that the whole genre came to be built around the concept of… — Stewart Copeland Copy Share Image
I always work with the same composer, his name is Ali Helnwein. I don't have a musical background. — Alex Prager Copy Share Image
Too many composers become involved in intellectual speculation which seems to matter more to them than the sound that comes out of… — Louise Talma Copy Share Image
Every composer's music reflects in its subject-matter and in its style the source of the money the composer is living on while… — Virgil Thomson Copy Share Image
Of all composers, past and present, I am the least learned. I mean that in all seriousness, and by learning I do… — Giuseppe Verdi Copy Share Image
I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on… — Ralph Vaughan Williams Copy Share Image
I don't compose, actually. I just record. I'm the opposite of a composer in my way of working. I'm more instinctive. — Yann Tiersen Copy Share Image
Composers can do things that weren't allowed in the 17th century. Until we had composers like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff to… — Aaron Zigman Copy Share Image
Matisse was my God. I'm a French artist, that's for sure. I am color-oriented and what you might call a composer. I… — Francoise Gilot Copy Share Image
If you aim at anything lower that is expecting your audience to be really alert and aware, then you're going to be… — Peter Maxwell Davies Copy Share Image
When you have a single composer writing his work, it shouldn't be doled out in singles based on the length of a… — Gail Zappa Copy Share Image
I don't believe in a composer who is only able to compose, who can't play or conduct, can only use a computer.… — Krzysztof Penderecki Copy Share Image
Why should the composer be more guilty than the poet who warms to fantasy by a strange flame, making an idea that… — Franz Schubert Copy Share Image
“It was clear that the composer no longer consoled himself with the thought that music could express everything and did not require… — Solomon Volkov Copy Share Image
Any composer who is gloriously conscious that he is a composer must believe that he receives his inspiration from a source higher… — John Philip Sousa Copy Share Image
Remember always that the composer's pen is still mightier than the bow of the violinist; in you lie all the possibilities of… — John Philip Sousa Copy Share Image
In simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us,… — Mikhail Lermontov Copy Share Image
Pandit Pran Nath has given much of his later life to America and Europe and has influenced many of our younger composers. — Bernard Holland Copy Share Image
That is basically me, and although I have done many things in my life - conducting, playing piano, and so on -… — Morton Gould Copy Share Image
My primary calling, I always knew since the age of 11, was as a composer, and so that had to take priority. — Gunther Schuller Copy Share Image
