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Quotes by Composer
"Musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute."
41
"I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment."
41
"Then, in 1983 I went on a very long concert tour all over Europe."
41
"Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn."
40
"My intention here is to make it clear that not a single cell of my composition, here in regard to The Raven, is found by chance or intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precision and inevitability of a mathematical equation."
40
"In all my travels I never met with any one Scotchman but what was a man of sense: I believe everybody of that country that has any, leaves it as fast as they can."
39
"It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces."
39
"Above all things, I must not get angry. If I do get angry I knock all the teeth out of the mouth of the poor wretch who has angered me."
Poor,
39
"Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors."
39
"Socially I never was an outsider. I have never thought of the conflict element before frankly, but perhaps it was wanting to belong, and at the same time wanting to retain one's own personality."
39
"We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm."
39
"Yes, I was invited to make the sound environment at a booth of a huge electronic company, during the Hanover Industrial Fair in 1973. It was a job. Slightly good paid. But not as much as my producer then told the press."
39
"If you come from Paris to Budapest you think you are in Moscow."
39
"Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple."
39
"Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm schizophrenic, and so am I."
39
"What I gave I have, what I spent I had, what I left I lost by not giving it."
39
"When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't."
39
"I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance."
38
"Nobody understands another's sorrow, and nobody another's joy."
38
"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."
38
"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."
38
"In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution."
38
"But I'm an adventurer. I like invention, I like discovery."
38
"You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion."
38
"In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead."
38
"We're doing a workshop over the first two weeks of December, I believe, with Graciella Daniele directing it."
38
"What Bill O'Reilly says means nothing. What Stephen Bennett says means nothing. What God says means everything."
38
"I have just begun a work in which an important part is given to a large chorus and with it I want to use several of your instruments - augmenting their range as in those I used for my Equatorial - especially in the high range."
38
"Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience."
38
"Broad paths are open to every endeavour, and a sympathetic recognition is assured to every one who consecrates his art to the divine services of a conviction of a consciousness."
38
"Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on."
38
"Throughout the evening I would be recording these long saxophone delays and about four hours into the concert, if I wanted to take a break I would just play back the saxophone."
38
"No, it's a Bb. It looks wrong and it sounds wrong, but it's right."
38
"I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing 'em."
38
"You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel."
37
"You can see my decision as either a distinctive factor or as a limitation. I don't feel it is a limitation."
37
"I've been living with the minor second all my life and I finally found a way to handle it."
37
"I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way."
37
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