Composer Quotes

I started playing piano with a little band in high school. I was terrible. I thought I had absolutely no talent. I couldn't keep time. I only got into McGill, which was a lousy music school, because they were taking American music students.

I've always had a problem with people who couldn't tell the truth or admit a mistake and say they're wrong.

Knowing when to leave may be the smartest thing anyone can learn.

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.

My masters are strange folk with very little care for music in them.

Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.

I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results.

It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

If I decide to be an idiot, then I'll be an idiot on my own accord.

Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.

I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well.

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.

The new limitations are the human ones of perception.

I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media.

Women's music is underrepresented.

Everything is just better in California - the wine, the food, fruits and vegetables, the comforts of living. Even the instrumentalists are generous and curious. Everything is wonderful.

When you are accompanying someone, you are listening to them the way you listen to a Bach Chorale, where four parts are going on at the same time, all of which are gorgeous melodies, all being played simultaneously.

When today's generation reads Jack's books or they listen to the music created by some of us, I believe that they see there is a different way of approaching today's life and today's sometimes seeming hopelessness that can provide answers.

We met with the poet Frank O'Hara, who was a link between Upper and Lower Bohemia, and who worked at the Museum of Modern Art, where we had hoped to do the readings.

We had common interests in the beauty of the French language. We both had a tremendous love of jazz. We shared dreams of getting married and having a family, living in the country, leading an idyllic life.

There are a lot of wonderful things created in our culture that have been ignored that can speak to them.

The Upper Bohemia people wore tuxedos in an art gallery, and Lower Bohemia was all of us.

The idea of the peace movement and of people who spent their entire lives trying to have a more egalitarian, just society, suddenly became swamped by the record industry, by the new rock and roll culture, and by the idea of not trusting anyone over thirty.

The atmosphere was wide open in those circles that we traveled in.

That is what I did with Jack, and that's why he liked to do the readings with me because he knew I was there for him, and for our ability to blend the poetry and the music.

That by listening to some music, by reading some books, by looking at paintings, and most important by hanging out with one another - by collaborating with one another and creating your own network - you can achieve something that is much better than what is out there.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti had a tremendous education as an artist and also an enormous knowledge of literarture.

In symphonic music, when you are conducting, you do the same thing. You are feeling the whole orchestra, thinking ahead so you can prepare for a change.

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.

In a jazz atmosphere, the audience members were so quiet and respectful of the musicians that you felt you were almost part of a meeting at a church or a temple, where everyone was completely in tune with the sermon and what the whole event was about.