Composer Quotes

You conductors who are so proud of your power! When a new man faces the orchestra–from the way he walks up the steps to the podium and opens his score–before he even picks up his baton–we know whether he is the master or we.

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

Richard Rodgers

Style is the dress of thought; a modest dress,
Neat, but not gaudy, will true critics please.

We've got to have
We plot to have
For it's so dreary not to have
That certain thing called the Boy Friend.

Let us, at any rate, give heed to suffer joyfully the crosses that God sends us, because they all, if we are saved, will become for us eternal joys. When infirmities, pains, or any adversities afflict us, let us lift up our eyes to heaven and say, "One day all these pains will have an end, and after them I hope to enjoy God forever."

Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori

Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find,
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.

Love is born of faith, lives on hope, and dies of charity.

Gian Carlo Menotti

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

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

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

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

Of jazz

Ignacy Jan Paderewski

I'm told that Saint-Saëns has informed a delighted public that since the war began he has composed music for the stage, melodies, an elegy and a piece for the trombone. If he'd been making shell-cases instead it might have been all the better for music.

When discussing a march that he had composed for his regiment:

General: Isn't it a little fast, Korngold? The men can't march to that.
Korngold: Ah yes, well, you see Sir, this was composed for the retreat.

You're a man, and that's a bonus
'Cause when you're swinging your cojones
You'll show 'em what testosterone is.

What good it does one to have a hearty, uncontrollable fit of laughter.

Charlotte Alington Barnard

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.

A cook, when I dine, seems to me a divine being, who from the depths of his kitchen rules the human race. One considers him as a minister of heaven, because his kitchen is a temple, in which his ovens are the altar.

Marc-Antoine Madeleine Désaugiers

The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behooves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c'est l homme, what is likely to happen if l homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?

Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is this freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.

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

When I looked at my own self and my own depression, it was funny. It was very sad, but it was also very funny.

Elizabeth Swados

Too many years fighting back tears. Why can't the past just die? Wishing you were somehow here again, knowing we must say goodbye. Try to forgive, teach me to live, give me the strength to try! No more memories, no more silent tears, no more gazing across the wasted years. Help me say goodbye.

Andrew Lloyd Webber

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

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

Cornelius Cardew

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