I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work - the best and the worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively little.
What they, in their innocence, cannot comprehend is that a properly constituted, healthy, decent man never writes, acts, or composes.
The progress of the world can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of the individual beings who compose the world.
Slavery can only be abolished by raising the character of the people who compose the nation; and that can be done only by showing them a higher one.
If you aim at anything lower that is expecting your audience to be really alert and aware, then you're going to be caught out sooner or later as a composer.
Sidney Poitier and Sidney Lumet were instrumental in helping me get started as the first black composer to get name credit for movie scores.
some of the best music was composed by Beethovan,but he was deaf,some of the best poetry of nature was written by Milton,but he was deaf.possible is always inside the impossible...
I don't meet stockbrokers or carpenters or coal miners; I spend all day with actors, composers and photographers.
I was meant to be a composer and will be I'm sure. Don't ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football - please.
We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.
With most of the songs and music that I've composed, irrespective of the myriad videos made, I was always careful not to overly define the experience, leaving room for people to internalize things for themselves, making their experience more integral...
I am not a composer of music; I sing pieces which have been written for me which gives me bigger freedom to search for pieces I want to record.
Whenever we warm our hands by the fire, we allow the energy radiated by the fire to quicken up the movements of the atoms of which the hands are composed. When we cool any substance, we check those movements.
Every day I lugged my backpack through the halls, waiting for the final bell. Then I'd race home and hole up in my room, playing the drums and the piano, composing music.
Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.
There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.
Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.
I did not compose my work as one might put on a church vestment... rather it sprung from the truly fervent faith of my heart, such as I have felt it since my childhood.
I was born out of due time in the sense that by temperament and talent I should have been more suited for the life of a small Bach, living in anonymity and composing regularly for an established service and for God.
My musical knowledge is so bad it's embarrassing. When composers discuss music with someone as primitive as myself, they have to talk about it in terms of senses and emotion, rather than keys and tempo.
No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.
