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"After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz."
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"Why have we built warships to bring home peace?"

"Fire supposed he needed to be there in order to give rousing speeches and lead the charge into the fray, or whatever is was commanders did in wartime. She resented his competence at something so tragic and senseless. She wished he, or somebody, would throw down his sword and say, 'Enough! This is a silly way to decide who's in charge!' And it seemed to her, as the beds in the healing room filled and emptied and filled, that these battles didn't leave much to be in charge of. The kingdom was already broken, and this war was tearing the broken pieces smaller."
Explore more quotes by Gunther Schuller


"But somehow, I felt no inclination to be interested in it in any amateur way, let alone professional, until suddenly I became interested. And the first thing I did was to compose: not play an instrument, but to compose."


"So now, thirty years, forty years later, I mean, I could find a whole orchestra of a thousand to put these things together in New York City alone. In those days, if I could scrape up twenty musicians to do this it was something extraordinary."


"The record company started as an adjunct to that, to give young composers their first recorded performances; to give young musicians their first debut on a recording. These are all things that big record companies would never touch because there is no money in it!"


"I don't hate work, composing is not work for me, it's my pleasure; it's my life. So why should I stop? If something is pleasurable and exciting and rewarding, why should one stop?"


"You know, I'm not gonna take my money with me to heaven or hell, wherever I'm going. So I want to do something good with it even though my means are very limited. I'm no millionaire!"


"Because I have sixty years of being a professional composer, conductor, musician, whatever, and you develop a lot of friendships and you get involved with a lot of sort of long-term commitments and obligations."


"And it is this sense that some of us have to contribute to the culture, to the society in ways that may hurt financially, so what? We do it because we are born to do it, we feel we have no other choice and so be it."


"I would like to read some books: I don't have time; I would like to continue working on my autobiography."


"That was more or less coincidental in the sense that my parents wanted me to come back to New York because that's the center of musical activity still to this day, more or less, and so I auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera."
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