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Musical Composer Inspirational Quotes (58)

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I came to what I think of as the critical problem: the aging process of a piece of music. I noticed in the '70s that pieces I wrote would sound great the first time I listened to them and then on repeated hearings they sounded older and older until what seemed exciting and vibrant on first listening became stale.
Paul Lansky
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I've had a lot of fun writing percussion music. It feels quite similar to writing computer music. But I found myself in the role of choreographer in a way, worrying about physical movement and such.
Paul Lansky
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I would say that I'm a really eclectic music lover, so I love the fact that one month I will be doing one kind of music and the next month I will be doing something very different and I think that really works for me in terms of my own personal tastes and styles.
Christopher Lennertz
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I really said, 'Okay, this is just the right job for me. This is really what I need to be doing: telling stories through music in lots of different styles of music.'
Christopher Lennertz
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A Composer who hears sounds will try to find a notation for sounds. One who has ideas will find one that expresses his ideas, leaving their interpretation free, in confidence that his ideas have been accurately and concisely notated.
Cornelius Cardew
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If a man's religion does not affect his use of money, that man's religion is vain.
Hugh Martin
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With a piece of classical music by Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, on first listening I'm referencing it with other pieces by them that I know. I think that most people do this - they listen to pieces through the filter of pieces they already know.
Paul Lansky
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I'm trying to phase out my availability on the phone. People call you when you're walking down the street and say the most random stuff.
Nico Muhly
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I think my generation is a lost generation in a way.
Nico Muhly
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In your cells right now, an enzyme is making a copy of your dna in less than two hours, right in the nucleus.
Hugh Martin
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Sometimes I imagine that there's a binary division going on in contemporary practice that has to do with chromatic versus diatonic. I notice that I tend to listen in a diatonic sense, that I register a pitch as a member of a diatonic scale, even in a non-tonal context.
Paul Lansky
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The notation is more important than the sound. Not the exactitude and success with which a notation notates a sound but the musicalness of the notation in its notating.
Cornelius Cardew
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I found myself recycling ideas and I saw that I had to invent reasons to compose a piece rather than start from some exciting idea.
Paul Lansky
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I think of myself as experimenting with different ways of structuring pieces. A lot of it has to do with the computer, of course.
Paul Lansky
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The experimentation that I do has a lot to do with tunes and pitches and ways that melodies are put together.
Paul Lansky
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It's always a thrill for me to see new versions of my pieces on YouTube.
Paul Lansky
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With repeated listenings, a piece eventually becomes its own being. I very often say to students that this is like meeting a person for the first time. When you first meet someone, you reference that person with others who are similar but, as you get to know that person better, you begin to understand his unique qualities.
Paul Lansky
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To call somebody a Jewish composer is obviously redundant.
Mitch Leigh
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Even more than in the concert hall, in church there are things you can and cannot do, just out of respect. You would never have the sound of someone being nailed to a cross, or the sound of a child being born, because everybody knows the story. We know that we're meant to feel a complicated raft of things.
Nico Muhly
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Art is art when it is appreciated by someone.
Isao Tomita
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If music leaves any impression at all, it does so without regard to stylistic issues.
Aulis Sallinen
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It is really amazing to be able to do cinematic, big feature style film music on a weekly basis and do it in LA, on a big scoring stage, on a studio lot, and do it with the right players and make it sound great.
Christopher Lennertz
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I was very fortunate to be at a wealthy institution. I do recognize the drawbacks and limitations of the academic world but it's basically the world I grew up in and there's no way in which I would have been able to survive in the so-called real world.
Paul Lansky
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My only real requirement is that I like the projects to be good and I like the people that I work with to be really nice people and great people, and as long as that's the case the music is fun to do always.
Christopher Lennertz
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