Skip to content

Composer Quote by Nico Muhly

“Composition is interesting because, in a sense, you always have…” quote by Nico Muhly — Download Open image

“Composition is interesting because, in a sense, you always have to let it go. Unless you're a true composer/performer, you're always sending a PDF and then someone else makes it. It's like instructions for a short story, faxed to every English student who's studying it.”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.8 out of 5 (7 ratings)

Composer Composition Instruction Interesting Let it go Performers Short story Stories Students Study

More by Nico Muhly

In really fancy restaurants they never point to the bathroom, they just gesture toward the bathroom or they'll lead you to the bathroom. The…

Image

For me the best kind of film music is liturgical music. Liturgical music is essentially a million scores for the same film.

Image

Riding a horse is a relationship with a foreign creature, and with musicians it's a similar thing: "OK, I'm going to put something on…

Image

Every couple weeks I'll listen to Sibelius's Seventh Symphony, just to check in, to see how it's doing. It's doing OK.

Image

Because I had been in conservatory for so long, I was jealous of my friends in bands.

Image

As a composer you want to tell musicians two completely contradictory things. You want to say, "Play exactly what I wrote, but bring your…

Image

My urge, when I go to the store, is to buy everything. And it's the same when I'm composing. My first instinct is basically…

Image

Whenever I get asked to write orchestra music or music that is for a lot of players, I try to make it a little…

Image

I'm pretty clear about what I'm capable of doing.

Image

Even more than in the concert hall, in church there are things you can and cannot do, just out of respect. You would never…

Image

The score is doing a lot of work. It's like Wagner. It's like a yak carrying people.

Image

There's a lot of violence in Beethoven not explicitly suggested by the notes or in his markings, necessarily. There's just a way that it…

Image

Explore all 19 Nico Muhly quotes

More Composer quotes

A composer knows that music is written by human beings for human beings and that music is a continuation of life, not something separated…

Image

Bruce Katz is a spectacular talent! He's a brilliant composer and arranger who uses uncommon and unique musical intelligence to redefine jazz and blues…

Image

Trombone virtuoso and innovative composer, Papo combines the best of jazz and Latin music to create a genre that is unique and wild. He's…

Michael Brecker

Image

“- Mom, can I tell them there that I'm Romanian? - Sure, why not tell them? - I was thinking that they wouldn't think...…

Image

The number of e-mails and letters that I get from choreographers, from sculptors, from composers who are being inspired by science is huge.

Image

The architect is very interesting because the architect is the commander, meaning the one who commands all the workers. The architect is also the…

Santiago Calatrava

Image

If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.

Image

Seen from the point of view of the composer, the most nonsensical practice is that of casting people in musicals who are unable to…

Image

I think there's just been this "thing" that's developed, this way that we have of talking about our music that alienates people. And I…

Image

The ability to understand and deliver comedy and tragedy is extremely rare in one composer.

Image

When synthesizers appeared everyone was a composer suddenly.

Alexandre Desplat

Image

A mission that comes from the heart to promote these things and to encourage composers to write, then of course they should do it.…

Marc-Andre Hamelin

Image

Browse all 797 Composer quotes