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Quotes by Composer
"In 1955 music wasn't that important. Music was a kind of a special thing you went and did."
21
"Even if I know I shall never change the masses, never transform anything permanent, all I ask is that the good things also have their place, their refuge."
21
"It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story."
21
"Music is music whether it is for the stage, rostrum or cinema ."
21
"I had been interested in Indian music and I actually started studying Tableaus before I met him."
21
"I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas - I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day."
21
"The truth is, I initially became a singer-songwriter while still in my teens because it was the only way to guarantee that somebody on earth would sing the songs I was writing. Since then, I've performed just about everywhere: rock clubs, concerts halls, arenas, TV."
21
"When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee."
21
"However now we can create a sound that can truly startle someone and in terms of sound effects I think the environment that we are in now has improved dramatically."
21
"I was encouraged by my mother and, to a lesser extent, by my father."
21
"I think we always move from imitation to assimilation to innovation, but I can't name you 20 people outside those we've already recognized who ever got to point three: innovation."
21
"I've tried in my career to do most everything, because it all intrigues me. And I've found the first time I work in a new form, I discover all the things that make that an exciting medium. I've been very busy most of my career. I've had very few vacations."
21
"Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against the weak; religion is a cloak of ambition, injustice and vice."
21
"Suddenly, at about ten o'clock, a dull thud sounded somewhere far away from us, and simultaneously we saw a small white round cloud about half a mile ahead of us where the shrapnel had exploded. The battle had begun."
21
"For about seven years. I really like it there. There are a lot of great musicians. The scene is very open. A lot of stuff going on. People's ears are really open, they are not closed. A lot of scenes here, people just get tunnel vision and are into one thing."
21
"Repetition is based on body rhythms, so we identify with the heartbeat, or with walking, or with breathing."
21
"I don't think that the Pulitzer should be given the way it is. I think the competition should be anonymous. I think completely different people would win it if the names were taken off because a lot of it is done on relationships and names."
21
"There were periods when I sometimes made fires in a large, open fireplace that lasted about two weeks, which was how long it took to burn my compositions. So there has been an awful lot that I have destroyed."
Open,
21
"I think recordings have been a terrific advance because now, when you have a piece of music, particularly something that appears to the listener very complicated, there's really a push to the world to try to figure out what it was that he was hearing."
21
"Since I started composing I have always worked with series of tempos, even superimposed the music of different groups of musicians, of singers, instrumentalists who play and sing in different tempos simultaneously and then meet every now and then in the same tempo."
20
"Composers love to write for symphony orchestras because the symphony is the Rolls Royce of musical instruments."
20
"Our most intimate contact with civilizations long since dust has been through the art which has survived them."
Art,
20
"There are so few directors who are musical who appreciate music."
20
"If the audience never understands the plot, it can be counted on to be attentive to the very end."
End,
20
"In particular what is most important to me is the transformation of a sound by slowing it down, sometimes extremely, so that the inner of sound becomes a conceivable rhythm."
20
"You wouldn't think it would but my parents were really balanced about that. When it came time for me to be out of the house and out on my own they were very supportive."
20
"The piece that had a large influence on me was Turangalila."
20
"I did all kinds of things in order to earn a living."
20
"I don't think there is much American music."
20
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