20th-century Composer Quotes

The number of interviews I've ever given could be counted on the fingers of my hands.

They're creepy and they're kooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They're all together ooky,
The Addams Family.

When you are clear about what you want to learn, you will find your teacher. The teacher is already there. The two of you will meet because you are looking for each other.

My true function within a society which embraces all of us is to continue an age-old tradition. This tradition is to create images from the depths of the imagination and to give them form, whether visual, intellectual or musical.

Michael Tippett

Walk and never get tired,
Fly and never falter
I'm gonna move on up a little higher.

W. Herbert Brewster

When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me.

I don't think that it is good for the world of music to have everything come out of the same mold. God didn't place only roses on earth, or only lilies or only violets. He put flowers of many sorts and many colors here, the beauty of each enhancing that of the others.

William Grant Still

Originality cannot be a goal. It is simply inevitable. The truly pathbreaking step can never be predicted, and certainly not by the person who makes it at the time he makes it. He clears as he goes, evolves his own techniques, devises his own tools, ignores where he must. And his path cannot be retraced, because each of us is an original being.

I believe that most of what was said of God was in reality said of that Spirit whose body is Earth.

George W. E. Russell

Heat is work and work's a curse And all the heat in the universe Is gonna cool down Because it can't increase.

Come on,
Ease on down, ease on down the road.
Don't you carry nothin',
That might be a load.

Bear in mind that parts of the score may be devoid of direct musical relevance.

Cornelius Cardew

Is an animal less or more intelligent because it lives without clothes, central heating, and well, atom bombs ?

You have to eat oatmeal or you'll dry up. Anybody knows that.

Home for the exile in a secular and contingent world is always provisional

Trinh T. Minh-ha

The distance in form, intention, mood and expression between Schubert's songs for voice and piano and those of, say, Adele is remarkably small.

Now there is no taboo; everything is allowed. But one cannot simply go back to tonality, it's not the way. We must find a way of neither going back nor continuing the avant-garde. I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.

Music is everything that one listens to with the intention of listening to music.

The night is like a lovely tune,
Beware my foolish heart!
How white the ever-constant moon,
Take care, my foolish heart!

Jazz is the best of all nourishments. It feeds the creative spirit like nothing else can.

Every man and woman alive is gifted by God in some special way. People who have a self-image of worth are going to see value in what they do. This is the attitude that motivates them to be and to do their best. It's a drive that comes from within people.

That's a storm that's going to last until
The final wind blows... and when the wind blows,
The Cradle Will Rock.

Marc Blitzstein

You see, it is not enough to be a great composer. To write music like that you must be a chosen instrument of God.

Music is neither old nor modern: it is either good or bad music, and the date at which it was written has no significance whatever.

I don't like my music, but what is my opinion against that of millions of others.

Frederick Loewe