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Quotes by Composer
"In my model, important interference phenomena arise when individual strata come into contact. These chaotic fluctuations are, I suppose, what my music is really 'about.'"
32
"So, essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns."
32
"In my piano concerto I developed this polyphony to much higher complexity."
32
"Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out."
32
"Connection is what one is after in probably most media, but certainly in film, which is an immersive medium."
32
"More than 90 percent of all the prisoners in our American prisons have been abused as children."
32
"I've always been interested in shaping music in odd ways, with odd riffs and that's been probably something that I've continued on with my studies with improvisation as I'm working with people."
32
"You can't have personal investors anymore because it's too expensive, so you have to have corporate investment or a lot of rich people."
32
"And the invention of transformations of certain figures has become the most important in musical composition."
32
"He combines the manners of a Marquis with the morals of a Methodist."
32
"Out of doing all that experimentation with sound I decided I wanted to do it with live musicians. To take repetition, take music fragments and make it live. Musicians would be able to play it and create this kind of abstract fabric of sound."
32
"Morally, the world is both better and worse than it was. We are worse off than in the middle ages, or the 17th and 18th centuries, in that we have the atomic menace."
32
"I've come up with another formulation about style: that it's essentially a manifestation of a certain habitual set of limitations. It's what a composer does NOT do that defines a style."
32
"I never force myself to be devout except when I feel so inspired, and never compose hymns of prayers unless I feel within me real and true devotion."
32
"What a beautiful art, but what a wretched profession."
32
"In the olden days, everybody sang. You were expected to sing as well as talk. It was a mark of the cultured man to sing."
32
"I didn't want much. I wanted much more. In fact, I wanted everything."
32
"I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing."
32
"But you can't really know your audiences so well."
31
"The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance."
31
"The manager is to be blamed who distributes parts to his players which they are unable to act."
31
"The human voice is the first and most natural musical instrument, also the most emotional."
31
"Divorce is one of the most financially traumatic things you can go through. Money spent on getting mad or getting even is money wasted."
31
"I felt Brighton was a perfect ending to a really interesting career."
31
"When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love."
31
"I was blown away by the standing ovation. I've had tributes before, sure, but I don't retain that feeling, and I wasn't prepared for it on Tuesday. But maybe you shouldn't retain these things or you'd be on a permanent high."
31
"It is obvious that anything a scientist discovers or invents is based on previous discoveries and inventions. The same applies to the arts."
31
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