Composer Quotes

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.

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

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

Carrie Jacobs-Bond

Life is just a bowl of cherries,
Don't take it serious; it's too mysterious.

There were birds in the sky, but I never saw them winging, No I never saw them at all, Until there was you.

Meredith Willson

Autumn in New York Is often mingled with pain. Dreamers with empty hands May sigh for exotic lands; It's Autumn in New York, It's good to live it again.

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

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

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

Trinh T. Minh-ha

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

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

To copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better.

Salvation Army Booth objected to the devil having all the good tunes. I object to jazz and vaudeville having all the best instruments.

Composing a piece of music is very feminine. It is sensitive, emotional, contemplative. By comparison, doing housework is positively masculine.

They were summoned from the hillside,
They were called in from the glen,
And the country found them ready
At the rallying call for men
Let no tears add to their hardships

Thee, wond'rous chemist! Who canst make, at will, Wash-balls from dew-drops; and canst blooms distil; With blooms and dews, Dame Nature's self canst pose, And brew, like spiders, poison from the rose!

Charles Dibdin the younger

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.

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

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.

Unlike American film score composers, Japanese film score composers are given only three or four days in which to write the music for a movie. Because of this, I have almost always been very frustrated while writing a score. I therefore can't select any of my scores as favorites.

What we ask of music, first and last, is that it communicate experience - experience of all kinds, vital and profound at its greatest, amusing or entertaining at another level.

Suddenly a mist fell from my eyes and I knew the way I had to take.

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

Poetry and painting have arrived to their perfection in our own country; music is yet but in its nonage [immaturity], a forward Child, which gives hope of what it may be hereafter in England, when the masters of it shall find more Encouragement.

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