Composers Quotes

When I began, the guitar was en-closed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, be-cause there were no virtuoso guitarists.

… the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race … Properly the Jew ought hardly to be hears of; but he is hears of, has always been heard of … His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers.

All of these people kept on being professional musicians and composers in the strictest sense.

To this day, I still travel with scores. Every time I'm on a plane - it could be Stravinsky or Mozart or Ravel.

Film music, over the years, has taken from everybody.

Bach and Beethoven, all of them, they had to write something to please the upper structure, those with money and power.

Ritchie Blackmore was a huge early influence on me, but after that I had to find my own way ... Johann Sebastian Bach was probably the most influential guy ever on me ... Vivaldi, Beethoven and eventually Paganini ... all of a sudden I was thinking in all these other areas, instead of blues riffs.

I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.

Is it true that we must accept the music of another race as being that which is American? Have not the white Americans sufficient individuality to develop a characteristic style of composition.

I am certain that most composers today would consider today's music to be rich, not to say confusing, in its enormous diversity of styles, technical procedures, and systems of esthetics.

I like musicals and I love music.

Then I started listenin' a lot to classical composers. Piano works. Just to see what they were doin'. That sort of put me in a different groove to try to blend all that in.

Some of the most learned of the people were chosen to make known the lives of those lords in songs.

I really like the Doors. I like Kevin Spacey, Bruce Springsteen, Will Farrell, Reggie Watts, Tina Turner, who is also very hot, Tracy Chapman. Beethoven.

I like Bach. I like Randy Newman.

My mother took me to Venice one time and showed me all the houses where famous composers used to live. It gave me a fascination for music and the city, but also for architecture. It was a valuable lesson.

Usually composers need a reason to write. I need a deadline.

I was lucky enough to have the songs in my first show written by George and Ira Gershwin. Then Cole Porter wrote five shows for me.

The man on the street, he knows who Beethoven is, he knows who Mozart is.

When synthesizers appeared everyone was a composer suddenly.

When you have great songs that are going to live longer than the composers, everything you can do to bring those different elements and nuances out, serve the song.

I remain extraordinarily proud of the Vaughan Williams symphonies I recorded with the LSO, and in the 1980s and '90s, I made an almost complete cycle of orchestral works by Richard Strauss with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.

...stories about [the German composer Johannes] Brahms's rudeness and wit amused me in particular. For instance, I loved the one about how a great wine connoisseur invited the composer to dinner. 'This is the Brahms of my cellar,' he said to his guests, producing a dust-covered bottle and pouring some into the master's glass. Brahms looked first at the color of the wine, then sniffed its bouquet, finally took a sip, and put the glass down without saying a word. 'Don't you like it?' asked the host. 'Hmm,' Brahms muttered. 'Better bring your Beethoven!'

I like anything that is melodic, and I'm a very big fan of movie soundtracks, so my favorite artists/producers would be Steve Jablonsky, Hans Zimmer, K-391, Ahrix, KSHMR, and many, many more.