"The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics."

Composer, Composers, Opposition

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"The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics."

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"Other composers have taken this particular technique much further than I in the meantime, with the result that the Law of Diminishing Returns has begun to apply."

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"When you have great songs that are going to live longer than the composers, everything you can do to bring those different elements and nuances out, serve the song."

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"Composers are not all good conductors."

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"Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary."

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"Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere."

Pablo Casals, Spanish Musician

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"Most of the important composers in our country are clustered in the Northeast."

Carlisle Floyd, American Composer

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"I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven."

Jascha Heifetz, American Musician

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"I began like all composers, writing for small groups. Chamber groups."

David Del Tredici, American Composer

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"I've heard though that there is a younger generation of tonal French composers who are reacting with vigour."

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"Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts."

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Explore more quotes by Brian Ferneyhough

"I am certainly not arguing for the de facto autonomy of the individual work, even though there is much to be said for making the attempt to see it in that light as one facet of the reception process."

Work

"Other composers have taken this particular technique much further than I in the meantime, with the result that the Law of Diminishing Returns has begun to apply."

Composer

"I frequently compose out the entire metric structure of a piece in modified cyclic form, where each cyclic revolution undergoes some form of 'variation' much as if measure lengths were concrete musical 'material.'"

Revolution

"This was possible only by dint of extended periods of frequently quite painful reflection and digestion."

Reflection

"Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them."

Society

"Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries."

Composer

"My own position is, that it is largely up to the work itself to suggest the nature of these referential points without dimensions in and through the processes by which the distance between them is maintained."

Nature

"I don't see 'lines of force' as being destructive, except to the extent that they are exclusively traceable through observance of the path of distorted material left in their wake."

Being

"What makes a specific quality or quantity of innovation retain its intense newness over the years?"

Quality

"Actually, most things I say in public lead more or less directly to my own compositional practice, so I should be careful about generalizing lest they come back to haunt me."

Practice