composer quotes

[conforza]

what is your favorite quote by a classical composer? i'll start: "Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second." - Ravel

[jabbz]

"I think 45 minutes is a good length for a moment." -  Simon Mawhinney

I love that quote.

[pies]

delete lol

[beethoven_fan]

This is not a quote by composer but a quote about a composer, but I still like it :

Victor Hugo speaking of Beethoven : "That deaf man heard the infinite"

[minor9th]

Sorabji once referred to a critic's response to one of his pieces as "an orgy of imbecility"! I'm sure some of you would apply that phrase to Sorabji's music...try to resist the imbecilic urge.

[thalbergmad]

delete lol

Was it crumb that said that?

[dnephi]

"Music IS Counterpoint" - Mahler (Emphasis added.)
"For us musicians, the music of Beethoven is the pillar of fire and cloud of mist which guided the israelites through the wilderness, that we might progress both day and night." - Franz Liszt

[eyeballnick]

An obvious one - "Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music" - Rachmaninoff

[tds]

"i am hungry" - mozart

[tds]

"NO WAY!" - beethoven

[concerto_love]

"NO WAY!" - beethoven

:)Sakujo...

[jaypiano]

"Music is a system of proportions in the service of a spiritual impulse."--George Crumb

[dnephi]

"That's what she said." - Bartok

[oscarr111111]

Music is all about wanting to be better at it.
Geddy Lee

[mikey6]

2 from WV

No, it's a Bb. It looks wrong and it sounds wrong, but it's right.

To fellow composer who claimed to  receive his finest inspiration while on his knees, WV replied "I wrote Holy City sitting on my bum!'

[aewanko]

I am God.

-Alexander Scriabin

[jaypiano]

"One could judge the quality of a composer by his rejections." -- Ravel

[pies]

Was it crumb that said that?

it was actually an Ice Cube quote but i removed it cuz it was kinda inappropriate and dirty!

[lonely progger]

" L'art est le plus beau des mensonges "
Mr. Croche ( Debussy)
Art is the most Beautiful of lies.

[pianowolfi]

L'art es le plus beau des vérités.

Wolfi   

[michel dvorsky]

"IMA buy U a DRAAANK."

- Brahms to Clara Schumann

[bench warmer]

One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time.
Gioachino Rossini

Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.
Gioachino Rossini


Talent works, genius creates.
Robert Schumann

Hats off, Gentlemen! A Genius!  (speaking about Chopin on hearing his La Ci Darem la  Mano Variations)

Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day.
Franz Liszt

Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.
Franz Liszt

and lastly,
What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.
Ludwig van Beethoven

[jaypiano]

A good composer does not imitate; he steals. -- Igor Stravinsky

[pianovirus]

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.
Ludwig van Beethoven

I like that one a lot, especially when one imagines in what times the statement was made. Two other Beethoven quotes - mind my possibly poor translation from German.

"In these days I did not know how to compose. Nowadays, I think, I know it" (response to an admirer of his septet op.20)

A very deliberate and self-consciousnes statement, apparently made in the context of op. 106:

The limits are not yet drawn which oppose talent and perseverance and which might declare "only until here and no further".

There is one Liszt quote I also like a lot:
My piano is for me what the fregate for the seafarer, the horse for the Arab -- no, it is more than that, as it has been my self, my language, my life.
(Mein Klavier ist für mich, was dem Seemann seine Fregatte, dem Araber sein Pferd -- mehr noch, es war ja bis jetzt mein Ich, meine Sprache, mein Leben.)

[lonely progger]

" I don't like people who never laughThey're not serious (sensible) "
Mozart
"I just put notes that love each other together"
Mozart

[indutrial]

Two great quotes by Pat Metheny, jazz guitarist and composer extrodinaire:

“Most guys at Berklee are going to wind up truck drivers…”

“And if I ever DO see [Kenny G] anywhere, at any function — he WILL get a piece of my mind, and maybe a guitar wrapped around his head.”

And one classical music quote, probably badly translated...

People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven Quartet.
~ Witold Lutoslawski

[thierry13]

Two great quotes by Pat Metheny, jazz guitarist and composer extrodinaire:

“Most guys at Berklee are going to wind up truck drivers…”

“And if I ever DO see [Kenny G] anywhere, at any function — he WILL get a piece of my mind, and maybe a guitar wrapped around his head.”

Who else to introduce jazz in a serious thread 

[pianistimo]

'i am merely competent, but in an age of incompetence -that makes me extraordinary.'  billy joel

'the memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.  things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the backyard or something said long ago.'  louis armstrong

'shame about these coughing people.  why are they never removed from concerts?'  probably victor borge

[jaypiano]

"The battles of the past have left us with songs.  The songs of today also deserve battles." -- Philippe Manoury

[indutrial]

Who else to introduce jazz in a serious thread 

Just because the first Metheny quote applies heavily to people with mean-spirited shitbrain dispositions like your own doesn't render it invalid in anyway. And, by the way, he's a great frigging composer. I'm sure your entire oeuvre (if you've written anything) isn't half as musically-compelling as the first 4 bars of 'Bright Size Life.'

And how, exactly, is this a serious thread? Oh, because it's about classical composers and because it's being talked about by such serious classical musicians. Right...

[akonow]

I don't think jazz musicians consider themselves composers... I, personally, think of them as "recording artists" The difference being the former is better than the latter.

[indutrial]

I don't think jazz musicians consider themselves composers... I, personally, think of them as "recording artists" The difference being the former is better than the latter.

What the hell jazz musicians are you thinking of? Even shitty ones like Kenny G. compose some of their own songs. One of my favorite guitarists, Pat Metheny, has a 448 page book containing 167 of his original pieces available from Hal Leonard. I'm pretty sure that he wrote that music and didn't just pull it out of his ass at random and have somebody transcribe it for him later. I'm sure a musician like Wayne Shorter would take exception to your idea, considering he's composed countless original tunes since the 1960s, included a ton of the songs that made Miles Davis's 1960s quintet famous. True, there are plenty of jazz musicians who espouse free-improvisational approaches to their craft, but even they often publish their own originals and score pieces for big band.

Of course, the improv elements are what make jazz what it is, but the composition is every bit as important and especially so since the 1960s, when jazz musicians began breaking away from playing standards and started doing full albums of original compositions.

Here's a couple of videos of Metheny's compositional approach taking center stage:

Playing a solo piece for 42-string guitar:

Jazz Orchestra version of one of his songs:

&feature=related

I love how easily some of you prefer to generalize and make smug comments about things of which you almost certainly have no real understanding.

[healdie]

"to listen is an effort, to hear is no merit a duck hears also" Stravinsky

"Never look at the Trombones it only encourages them" Richard Strauss

"too many pieces of music finish too long after the end" Stravinsky

Stravinsky after seeing a performance of John Cages 4:33 "I look foward to hearing his longer works"

[etcetra]

"It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied."

Mozart

"The Purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline, but rather the gradual lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity"

Glenn Gould

[franz_]

" I don't like people who never laughThey're not serious (sensible) "
Mozart

I heard once that this was a quote by chopin.... could it be?