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"Well when I was young, when I was very young, when I was a little boy I don't remember the music I heard, but there was an article in the Brooklyn Daily written by my Aunt about how I could choose phonograph records."
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"There are so few directors who are musical who appreciate music."

"I can see me continuing to make the best music I can, and let the chips fall where they may."

"88% of what we call good songs aren't really good. They merely remind us of a good time we once had."

"I just really longed to do music that reflected me as an adult and music that I thought was for other adults."

"Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn't, I don't really see a point to it."

"So all of the music had reference, or is inspired by something of the dharma that I've come in contact with."

"A song has to become as much a part of you as a tailored suit."
Explore more quotes by Elliott Carter


"I've known those pieces ever since I was about 16 or 17; I also at that time was taken to meet Charles Ives whom I got to know fairly well. He was the one who wrote a recommendation for me to get into college."


"Aaron Copland was a man that had a very specific point of view about what music should be which was that, he felt that new music should have the composer should show a personality in his music."


"That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are."


"Almost every one of my various zero numbered birthdays has had a big concert in London and often in Paris."


"Then, when the Depression came, all of this changed completely. Since that time, the entire public is of a very different sort and there was not so much support for contemporary music in a direct way."


"In any case, Ives encouraged me to go into music even though he himself had such a hard time being a composer."


"These wealthy people were very interested in contemporary music. They wanted to help diffuse it and get it to be known to other people."
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