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Quotes by Composer
"Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again."
66
"Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?"
63
"Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced."
63
"Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries."
60
"Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor."
59
"I guess we've had a very close relationship because I don't pretend to know about cinema and I think I do know a bit about theatre but he does, he respected that and so we really just had a collaboration which went completely like this."
59
"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing."
59
"If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it."
58
"Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn't see my own father."
58
"To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also."
58
"Conductors don't suffer, they are part of the performance."
58
"We appropriately compared the lifestyle to that of drug addiction and alcoholism - lifestyles that one would be encouraged to seek help to leave - never encouraged to stay in."
57
"Life that only a few hours before had glowed with enthusiasm and exultation, suddenly paled and sickened."
57
"There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead."
56
"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."
56
"Mozart wrote so many works in his thirty-five years that it would take a lifetime just to write out the notes. We literally do not know how he did it."
56
"I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena."
56
"Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes."
56
"Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration."
55
"I learned from my uncle that jazz, like symphony music, was built to last."
55
"I probably went to musique concrete concerts - though not the very first ones - at the beginning of the 50s."
55
"And harmony means that the relationship between all the elements used in a composition is balanced, is good."
55
"The project which we developed, however, was for a sound piece and I was initially curious that a sculptor should be interested in working with a musician, especially on a project for radio."
55
"For Debussy the musician and the man I have had profound admiration, but by nature I'm different from him. I think I have always personally followed a direction opposed to that of the symbolism of Debussy."
55
"The greatest misfortune of the wise man and the greatest unhappiness of the fool are based upon convention."
54
"Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass?"
54
"Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been put up to a critic."
54
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