Composer Quotes

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

J. J. Johnson
J. J. Johnson
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.

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.

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

Humanity seems doomed to do more evil than good. The greatest ideal on earth is human love.

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

Donald Swann
Donald Swann
Someone once said that the two most important things in developing taste were sensitivity and intelligence. I don't think this is so; I'd rather call them curiosity and courage. Curiosity to look for the new and the hidden; courage to develop your own tastes regardless of what others might say or think.

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

Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to have a purpose firm!
Dare to make it known!

There are no compensations to weigh against advancing years – no, not one.

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

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

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.

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!

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
George W. E. Russell
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.

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

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.

Orchestration is part of the very soul of the work. A work is thought out in terms of the orchestra, certain tone-colors being inseparable from it in the mind of its creator and native to it from the hour of its birth.

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

When the storms of life are raging, stand by me. When the world is tossing me, like a ship upon the sea, Thou who rulest wind and water, stand by me.

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

I'm goin' to Tishomingo,
Because I'm sad today.
I wish to linger,
Way down old Dixie way.
Oh my weary heart cries out in pain,
Oh how I wish that I was back again.
With a race,
In a place,
Where they make you welcome all the time.

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