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Composing Quotes

Browse 246 quotes about Composing.

Composing Quotes

“My mother also had us take piano lessons, and this had a similar effect. I hated those lessons, but I now play regularly for pleasure and have even tried my hand at composing.”

Play Hands Mother Pleasure Effects Lessons Hated Piano Composing Piano Lesson

Author:Robert B. Laughlin

“Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.”

Music Criticism Instruments Prepared Practicals Piano Composing

Author:John Cage

“Music is the space between the notes.”

Art Silence Music Quiet Music Is Notes Metaphor Weekend Composer Composing Composing Music Notes Music

Author:Claude Debussy

“Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art.”

Art Musician Works Of Art Classical Music Composing Famous Musician Classical Composers

Author:Claude Debussy

“Composing a concert is like composing a menu.... If you start with light pieces and play a 45-minute sonata after the interlude, it's like starting dinner with hors d'oeuvres and dessert and finishing with a Châteaubriand and vegetables.”

Ifs Play Light Pieces Minutes Starting Dinner Concerts Vegetables Finishing Dessert Composing Menus Sonatas

Author:Arthur Rubinstein

“However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons.”

Lessons Piano Composing Piano Lesson

Author:Gyorgy Ligeti

“I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.”

Language Piano Paris Hotel Melody Volume English Language Bookstores Composing

Author:Gordon Getty

“Composing computer programs to solve scientific problems is like writing poetry. You must choose every word with care and link it with the other words in perfect syntax. There is no place for verbosity or carelessness. To become fluent in a computer lnaguage demands almost the antithesis of modern loose thinking. It requires many interactive sessions, the hands-on use of the device. You do not learn a foreign language from a book, rather you have to live in the country for year to let the langauge become an automatic part of you, and the same is true for computer languages.”

“To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.”

Music Break Creativity Study Composer Composing Conductor Guidelines Creativeness Breaking Rules

Author:Nadia Boulanger

“You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.”

Firsts Ends Might Loses Rate Spontaneity Composing Second Rate Gershwin Ravel

Author:Maurice Ravel

“We tend to think and feel in terms of the art we like; and if the art we like is bad then our thinking and feeling will be bad. And if the thinking and feeling of most of the individuals composing a society is bad, is not that society in danger?”

Ifs Thinking Feels Art Feelings Individual Term Danger Composing

Book:The collected works of Aldous Huxley

Source: The collected works of Aldous Huxley

“Composing a piece of music is very feminine. It is sensitive, emotional, contemplative. By comparison, doing housework is positively masculine.”

Pieces Emotional Music Is Sensitive Comparison Feminine Masculine Positively Composing Housework Contemplative

Author:Barbara Kolb

“When we are writing, or painting, or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions, and are opened to a wider world, where colors are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize.”

People World Writing Sound Realizing Creativity Color Painting Normal Complexes Restriction Brighter Composing

Book:Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government”

States Government America United Principles United States United States Of America Unlimited Submission Composing States Rights

Book:The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and '99: With Jefferson's Original Draught Thereof. Also, Madison's Report, Calhoun's Address, Resolutions of the Several States in Relation to State Rights. With Other Documents in Support of the Jeffersonian Doctrines of '98

Source: The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and '99: With Jefferson's Original Draught Thereof. Also, Madison's Report, Calhoun's Address, Resolutions of the Several States in Relation to State Rights. With Other Documents in Support of the Jeffersonian Doctrines of '98

“There are people who must spend huge amounts of time composing these online diatribes against me, all about how disgusting and terrible I am and how no one should ever read my books, and it's not enough for them to hate me, they can't stand the fact that ANYONE likes me!”

People Should Book Enough Facts Hate Huge Amount Terrible Likes Online Disgusting Hate Me Composing

Author:Poppy Z. Brite

“Composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.”

Ifs World Giving Self Joy Winning Sound Hours Pleasure Creation Give Me Forgetfulness Composing Self Forgetfulness

Author:Clara Schumann

“Writing is the action of thinking, just as drawing is the action of seeing and composing music is the action of hearing.”

Thinking Writing Action Seeing Music Is Hearing Drawing Composing Composing Music

Book:Me

Source: Me

“I was...attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing "simple" music, blamed for deserting "modernism," accused of renouncing my "true Russian heritage." People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried "sacrilege": "The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone." To them all my answer was and is the same: You "respect," but I love.”

People Artist Simple Answers Heard Originals Stealing Heritage Cried Accused Modernism Composing Sacrilege

Author:Igor Stravinsky

“The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.”

Facts Listening Composing

Author:John Cage

“If you invent something, you're doing a creative act. It's like writing a novel or composing music. You put your heart and soul into it, and money. It's years of your life, it's your house remortgaged, huge emotional investment and financial investment.”

Ifs Writing Years Heart Soul House Novel Creative Emotional Huge Investment Financial Heart And Soul Composing Composing Music Financial Investment Emotional Investment

Author:James Dyson

“The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.”

Process Computer Program Attractive Programming Digital Aesthetic Preparing Composing

Book:The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms

Source: The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms

“I try not to observe myself in the process of composing a poem because I don't want to come up with a formula, which I would then be unscrupulous in using.”

Want Trying Process Come Up Formulas Corny Composing

Author:Thom Gunn

“It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful.”

Source: Letters from a Life Vol 1: 1923-39: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten

“If it doesn't come from your heart, music just doesn't work.”

Ifs Heart Work Music Musician Drummer Composing

Author:Levon Helm

“Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors - it's how you combine them that sets you apart.”

Writing Song Food Color Painting Cooking Notes Culinary Chef Flavor Composing Combining Creativeness

Author:Wolfgang Puck

“Whatever you do... put your heart and soul into it!”

Heart Soul Heart And Soul Composing It Still Hurts

Author:S. Truett Cathy

“My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when - and he won't necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.”

Kind Able Grows Knowing Seeds Gardener Composing

Author:Brian Eno

“The walking of passers-by offers a series of turns and detours that can be compared to "turns of phrase" or "stylistic figures." There is a rhetoric of walking. The art of "turning" phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path.”

Art Turns Walks Path Journey Figures Walking Offers Series Wander Phrases Hiking Rhetoric Trekking Strolling Composing Sauntering Detours

Book:The Practice of Everyday Life

Source: The Practice of Everyday Life

“I don't hate work, composing is not work for me, it's my pleasure; it's my life. So why should I stop? If something is pleasurable and exciting and rewarding, why should one stop?”

Ifs Should Hate Pleasure Exciting Should I Composing Don't Hate Stop Hating

Author:Gunther Schuller

“Being in the studio is okay but sitting in a room by yourself composing is a discipline that takes a certain type of mind set and Tommy has a great gift for that as did the previous guy.”

Mind Guy Certain Rooms Type Discipline Sitting Okay Studios Composing Mind Set Great Gifts

Author:James Young

“A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns, not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township, but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods.”

Persons Government Would Be Voice Cities Democracy Periods Republican Limits Equal Members Concern Responsible Equality Chosen Proportion Representatives Small Town Composing

Book:The Essential Jefferson

Source: The Essential Jefferson

“I am in the world only for the purpose of composing.”

World Purpose Composing

Author:Franz Schubert

“When the Second World War broke out, I felt that everyone must do his share, and I began composing songs and marches for the front. But soon events assumed such gigantic and far-reaching scope as to demand larger canvasses.”

World War Song Felt Share Fronts Events Demand Broke War Of The Worlds Reaching March Scope Second World War Composing

Author:Sergei Prokofiev

“Composing demands a degree of isolation.”

Demand Degrees Isolation Composing

Author:Cliff Martinez

“The speaker does not feel the grammatical rules he is said to apply in composing sentences, and men spoke grammatically for thousands of years before anyone knew there were rules.”

Men Feels Years Doe Said Sentences Spokes Speakers Grammar Composing

Author:B. F. Skinner

“The neurotic lies awake at night, composing letters to those he hates. He seldom thinks of dropping a line to those he loves.”

Thinking Lying Night Hate Lines Letters Awake Dropping Neurotic Composing Awake At Night

Author:Mignon McLaughlin

“Sometimes I have a notion that what might improve the situation is to have women take over the occupations of government and trade and to give men their freedom.”

“When I am composing, I try to clear my mind of having to publish, or having to sell a book or find readers. That kind of thinking gets in the way.”

Thinking Way Trying Mind Kind Book Clear Reader Sells Publish Composing

Author:Maxine Hong Kingston

“I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music, but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time.”

Writing Two Together Composing Writing Music Composing Music

Author:Bruce Cockburn

“I love making music, I love composing on my computer, just making crazy ethnic slack orchestral tracks, that's one of my fun things.”

Fun Crazy Computer Track Composing Love Making Fun Things

Author:Casey Abrams

“I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker.”

Kind Together Process Committed Filmmaker Composing

Author:David Antin

“I think I've done more recording in the past 10 years than most people, but it's all been directed toward film composing and soundtracks. Just the same, it's been great.”

People Thinking Years Done Past Film Composing Soundtracks

Author:Stanley Clarke

“As to writing another book on geometry [to replace Euclid] the middle ages would have as soon thought of composing another New Testament.”

Writing Book Age Science Middle Testament Middle Ages New Testament Geometry Composing Euclid

Author:Augustus De Morgan

“It seems that the increased number of scientific workers, their being split up into groups whose studies are limited to a small subject, and over-specialization have brought about a shrinking of intelligence. There is no doubt that the quality of any human group decreases when the number of the individuals composing this group increases beyond certain limits... The best way to increase the intelligence of scientists would be to decrease their number.”

Source: Man the Unknown

“When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.”

Writing Years Sometimes Used Song Careers Pops Singers Phrases Composing Pop Song

Author:Tom Glazer

“Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.”

Age Process Creative Seven Creative Process Elusive Composing

Author:Lukas Foss