Quotes About Composing Music

Quotes About Composing Music 


To write great music, the musician must make his life a great song.



The practice of altering a composer's work was more prevalent before the romantic age. Bach and Handel rearranged the music of their contemporaries, either directly, or by incorporating it into a work of their own.



Ceaseless work, analysis, reflection, writing much, endless self-correction, that is my secret.

J.S. Bach

Music is glorious in its own right; why should it accept the slavery of words? Music begins where words end. The inexplicable is the domain of music. It can say what words cannot, and so the less the words disturb the song, the better.

Tagore

It is the duty of the composer to serve his fellow man, to beautify human life and point the way to a radiant future. Such is the immutable code of the artist as I see it.

Sergei Prokofiev

A poet always has too many words in his vocabulary, a painter too many colors on his palette, a musician too many notes on his keyboard.

Jean Coctau

We hide ourselves in our music to reveal ourselves.

Jim Morrison

The sacredness of church music, the joyfulness and soulfulness of folksongs are the two pivots around which revolve true music.



A nation creates music--the composer only arranges it.

Bela Bartok

I regard all popular music as irrelevant in the sense that people in 200 years won't be listening to what is being written and played today. I think they will be listening to Beethoven. That's one of the reasons I don't take myself seriously.

Elton John

It is proportion that beautifies everything, the whole universe consists of it, and music is measured by it.

Orlando Gibbons

Originality is the art of concealing your source.



You must have the composition in your head, not your head in the composition.



The unconscious is the womb of all musical creation; all masterpieces are born there.



The value of a composer's work resides in the music itself, and not in how frequently it is played, how many honors its composer has won, or how much critical acclaim has been received.



A creative artist works on his next composition because he is not satisfied with his previous one. When he loses a critical attitude towards his own work, he ceases to be an artist.



The composer joins heaven and earth with threads of sound.



Do things, act. Make a list of the music you love, then learn it by heart. And when you are writing music of your own, write it as you hear it inside and never strain to avoid the obvious.

Nadia Boulanger

Melody is the golden thread running through the maze of tones by which the ear is guided and the heart reached.