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Exlpore more Composer quotes

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

"Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism."

"I loved Hendrix. I mean, really, really loved him. As if he were one of the great classical composers. And he was. That's how I saw him."

"I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena."

"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."

"The composers could no longer direct all performances in person, and so the responsibility of interpreting their works in the spirit in which they had been conceived was placed upon conductors."
Explore more quotes by David Del Tredici

"Composers love to write for symphony orchestras because the symphony is the Rolls Royce of musical instruments."

"A maverick feels like he has no choice however difficult his choice of expression. In my case, it was going backwards into tonality. It seemed so wrong. The idea that progress is going into the past in a new way is very strange, even though there are precedents."

"Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful."

"When I first wrote for orchestra, I didn't realize, when you have 20 people playing a violin line, that is very different than one person playing that line."
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