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Quotes by Composer
"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."
9
"All good music, whatever its date, is ageless - as alive and significant today as it was when it was written."
9
"The new limitations are the human ones of perception."
9
"Composing a piece of music is very feminine. It is sensitive, emotional, contemplative. By comparison, doing housework is positively masculine."
9
"In serial music, the series itself is seldom audible... What I'm interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one in the same thing."
9
"Music is the social act of communication among people, a gesture of friendship, the strongest there is."
9
"I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media."
8
"I dream of a collaboration that would finally be total, in which the librettist would often think as a composer and the composer as a librettist."
8
"Dates and periods are of interest only to the student of musical history."
8
"The relation between practical and spiritual spheres in music is obvious, if only because it demands ears, finger, consciousness and intellect."
8
"A man is simple when his chief care is the wish to be what he ought to be, that is honestly and naturally human."
8
"Music is neither old nor modern: it is either good or bad music, and the date at which it was written has no significance whatever."
8
"It is glorious to become a learner again at my time of life."
7
"I discovered that the most interesting music of all was made by simply lining the loops in unison, and letting them slowly shift out of phase with other."
6
"There is only one real happiness in life, and that is the happiness of creating."
6
"Ever since I began to compose, I have remained true to my starting principle: not to write a page because no matter what public, or what pretty girl wanted it to be thus or thus; but to write solely as I myself thought best, and as it gave me pleasure."
6
"The silver swan, who, living had no note, When death approached unlocked her silent throat."
6
"I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I don't know whether this is the cause why I did it in music and also why I did it in painting. Or vice versa: That I had this way as an outlet. I could renounce expressing something in words."
6
"A baby changes your dinner party conversation from politics to poops."
6
"If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another."
6
"I can tell you, dearest friend, that if it became known how much friendship, love and a world of human and spiritual references I have smuggled into these three movements, the adherents of programme music - should there be any left - would go mad with joy."
5
"It won't be long before we'll be writing together again. I just hope they have a decent piano up there."
5
"It is proportion that beautifies everything, the whole universe consists of it, and music is measured by it."
5
"I must say I've always composed music from the point of view of the performers."
5
"Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge, for it requires from its disciples, composers and performers alike, not only talent and enthusiasm, but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection."
5
"Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements."
4
"The modern composer builds upon the foundation of truth."
4
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