Composer Quotes

See, the night doth enfold us! See, all the world lies sleeping!

Giacomo Puccini

Do I love you because you're beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?

Richard Rodgers

For the man of talent affects to call his transgressions of the laws of sense trivial and to count them nothing considerd with his devotion to his art.

If nobody ever offers an opinion or takes the slightest interest in one's production, one loses not only all pleasure in them, but all power of judging their value.

Fanny Mendelssohn

It is evidently known beyond contradiction that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902.

Jelly Roll Morton

When I am no more, you will hear said of my work: "After all, it is only so much..." You will detach yourself from it, perhaps... All that has no importance. I have done what I could... and so, judge, my God.

Form is a theatrical event of a certain length, and the length itself may be unpredictable.

Christian Wolff

On "Begin the Beguine":

It became such a hit that it superseded anything that any band had ever had. It was the first time that a so-called swing band played something melodic and still gave it a beat.

What a terrible revenge by the culture of the Negroes on that of the whites!

Of jazz

Ignacy Jan Paderewski

I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media.

Men grow cold as girls grow old
And we all lose our charms in the end.
But square cut or pear shape,
These rocks won't lose their shape,
Diamonds are a girl's best friend.

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.

My boyfriend dumped me. My best friend won't talk to me. My future is in a garbage can. Everything has turned to crap. Can you please just let me be a sullen teenager. just this once

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

Anything you can do, I can do better,
I can do anything better than you.

Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright.

Come again: sweet love doth now invite,
Thy graces that refrain,
To do me due delight,
To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die,
With thee again in sweetest sympathy.

Artists live with God – but give their little finger to Satan. I sleep with the angels and dream of the devil.

Heitor Villa-Lobos

Have another little piece of my heart now baby, You know you got it if it makes you feel good.

It appears to me that they who in proof of any assertion rely simply on the weight of authority, without adducing any argument in support of it, act very absurdly. I, on the contrary, wish to be allowed freely to question and freely to answer you without any sort of adulation, as well becomes those who are in search of truth.

Vincenzo Galilei

Well, this is the end of a perfect day,
Near the end of a journey, too.

Carrie Jacobs-Bond

My darling, I will try to guess
What do you want or wish.
I know you prefer to dream
About a Gold Fish.
But I believe that you will find
The famous and gold key.
So, you will open the door.
You saw it in your dreams.
I know: you shall overcome
All troubles in your way.
But do remember every time
About must and may.

Volodymyr Melnykov

Pardon me boy is that the Chattanooga Choo-choo,
Track twenty nine,
Boy you can gimme a shine.
I can afford to board a Chattanooga Choo-choo,
I've got my fare and just a trifle to spare.
You leave the Pennsylvania station 'bout a quarter to four,
Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore,
Dinner in the diner nothing could be finer
Than to have your ham'n eggs in Carolina.

If you're in jazz and more than ten people like you, you're labelled commercial.

In poetry there are two giants, rough Homer and fine Shakespere. In music likewise we have two giants, Beethoven, the thinker, and the superthinker Berlioz.

Modest Mussorgsky