Quotes by Composers - Page 3

The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always graver than its performance - whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being played.
Andre Previn
The Sonata is an essentially dramatic art form combining the emotional range in vivid presentation of a full-size stage drama with the terseness of a short story.
Donald Francis Tovey
The sonatas of Mozart are unique they are too easy for children and too difficult for artists.
Artur Schnabel
Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.
Pablo Casals
Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear which remains unsatisfied and even uneasy until it hears something better.
Charles Burney
Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear which remains unsatisfied and even uneasy until it hears something better. I am convinced...that provided the ear be at length made amends there are few dissonances too strong for it. Disharmony to paraphrase Bergson's statement about disorder is simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed.
John Cage
He was dying all his life.
Hector Berlioz
I am sure my music has a taste of codfish in it.
Edvard Grieg
In the Negro melodies of America I find all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.
Antonin Dvorak
Jazz came to America 300 years ago in chains.
Paul Whiteman
Beethoven can write music thank God - but he can do nothing else on earth.
Ludwig van Beethoven
The public doesn't want new music the main thing that it demands of a composer is that he be dead.
Arthur Honegger
My advice about acting? Speak clearly don't bump into people and if you must have motivation think of your pay packet on Friday.
Noël Coward
A feeble body weakens the mind.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Vasectomy means not ever having to say you're sorry.
Larry Adler
Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Joy is not in things it is in us.
Richard Wagner
Hurried and worried until we're buried and there's no curtain call Life's a very funny proposition after all.
George M. Cohan
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love love love that is the soul of genius.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
My body has certainly wandered a good deal but I have an uneasy suspicion that my mind has not wandered enough.
Noël Coward
The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice love passion.
Nadia Boulanger
Whoever blushes is already guilty true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.
Ned Rorem
To write a good love letter you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
There is more stupidity around than hydrogen and it has longer shelf life.
Frank Zappa
Man can only become what he is able to consciously imagine or to "image forth."
Dane Rudhyar
When God made up this world of ours He made it long and wide And meant that it should shelter all And none should be denied.
Carrie Jacobs Bond
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Happiness: a good bank account a good cook and a good digestion.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid but which none have a right to expect.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Fhe Creator and Lord of all so loved the world that He sent His Son for its salvation the Prince and Savior of the faithful who washed and dried our wounds and from Him also came that most sweet medicine from which all the good things of salvation flow.
Hildegard of Bingen
A person can grow only as much as his horizon allows.
John Powell
Your world is as big as you make it.
Georgia Douglas Johnson
Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.
John Cage
There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Oscar Levant
Before I was a genius I was a drudge.
Ignace Jan Paderewski
It is great to have friends when one is young but indeed it is still more so when you are getting old. When we are young friends are like everything else a matter of course. In the old days we know what it means to have them.
Edvard Grieg
Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.
Ned Rorem
And we find at the end of a perfect day The soul of a friend we've made.
Carrie Jacobs Bond
Ye sons of France awake to glory! Hark! Hark! what myriads bid you rise! Your children wives and grandsires hoary Behold their tears and hear their cries!
Rouget de Lisle
It is manlike to punish but godlike to forgive.
Peter von Winter
Over a period of time it's been driven home to me that I'm not going to be the most popular writer in the world so I'm always happy when anything in any way is accepted.
Stephen Sondheim
I may not amount to much but at least I am unique.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The happiest is he who suffers the least pain the most miserable he who enjoys the least pleasure.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Yes we'll rally round the flag boys we'll rally once again Shouting the battle-cry of Freedom We will rally from the hillside we'll gather from the plain Shouting the battle-cry of Freedom.
George F. Root
Conformism is so hot on the heels of the mass-produced avant-garde that the 'ins' and the 'outs' change places with the speed of mach 3.
Igor Stravinsky
What do we teach our children? . . . We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique . . . You may become a Shakespeare a Michelangelo a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything.
Pablo Casals
Fame is but the breath of the people and that often unwholesome.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
John Cage
To accept whatever comes regardless of the consequences is to be unafraid.
John Cage
Without class differences England would cease to be the living theatre it is.
Anthony Burgess
Britain's best bulwarks are her wooden walls.
T. Augustine Arne
I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on.
Oscar Levant
For mem'ry has painted this perfect day. With colors that never fade And we find at the end of a perfect day The soul of a friend we've made
Carrie Jacobs Bond
I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.
Max Reger
Musical comedies aren't written they are re-written.
Stephen Sondheim
The real gift of love is self disclosure.
John Powell
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
Frédéric Chopin
Living in California adds ten years to a man's life. And those extra ten years I'd like to spend in New York.
Harry Ruby