Composing Quote by Gunther Schuller

“I don't hate work, composing is not work for me, it's my pleasure; it's my life. So why should I stop? If something is pleasurable and exciting and rewarding, why should one stop?”

Gunther Schuller

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I wanted to be a painter and an artist. And it's interesting that in some of my later musical works, I refer so often…

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Symphony musicians are not trained in improvising, certainly not in a jazz style.

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So now, thirty years, forty years later, I mean, I could find a whole orchestra of a thousand to put these things together in…

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My whole childhood was filled with classical music and going to concerts of the New York Philharmonic and other New York ensembles and organizations,…

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Many people think of me as a modernist, as a radical in music, you know, someone who's always sort of at the avant-garde of…

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After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for…

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I would like to read some books: I don't have time; I would like to continue working on my autobiography.

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My primary calling, I always knew since the age of 11, was as a composer, and so that had to take priority.

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His musical inspiration operates in a world uncluttered by conventional bar lines, conventional chord changes, and conventional ways of blowing or fingering a saxophone.…

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You know, I'm not gonna take my money with me to heaven or hell, wherever I'm going. So I want to do something good…

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Well, because music is my life and music is not work for me.

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So this anchoring in some way, in some important way in the past without repeating the past, but on the basis of the past…

Gunther Schuller

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Explore all 24 Gunther Schuller quotes

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Composing a piece of music is very feminine. It is sensitive, emotional, contemplative. By comparison, doing housework is positively masculine.

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I was really into the music of Cream after I finished composing the music for 'BTTB.'

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I don't meditate before I play or compose, but I see playing and composing as meditative acts.

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I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music, but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around…

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Every orchestra I know, every opera house I know, is desperately looking around trying to find new talent, new composing talent, supporting young composers,…

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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.

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The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because…

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