Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I first wrote for orchestra, I didn't realize, when you have 20 people playing a violin line, that is very different than one person playing that line.
I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.
If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.
We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm.
I think that one of the things that influences me most as a composer is to what extent I can deconstruct and reconstruct the material that I'm working with.
I think for a classical musician the goal is the same as an electronic musician. A very good professional classical musician must not think about technique.
If you're the sort of person that likes a job where once you know what you're doing you can keep doing what you're doing, don't ever become a film composer.
The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.
The fact that the theatregoing public likes my music is no credit to me. There are many other composers who write better music that the public doesn't like.
The most supreme beauty is that of the feminine; the source of all creativity. Even in my greatest despair, that realization alone restores my faith in God.
I can't even tolerate my own playing on electric keyboards. It's not about the musical ideas - the sound itself is toxic. It's like eating plastic broccoli.
There have been studies that clearly state that children who are exposed to arts education at a young age will in fact do markedly better in their SAT tests
I haven't seen Iowa people get so excited since the night Frank Gotch and Strangler Lewis lay on the mat for three and a half hours without moving a muscle.
In poetry there are two giants, rough Homer and fine Shakespere. In music likewise we have two giants, Beethoven, the thinker, and the superthinker Berlioz.
Without a strong cup to carry the emotion, it is only a curiosity. Great art can come to us only in strong cups. Without emotion, there is nothing to carry.
Everything we know by heart enriches us and helps us find ourselves. If it should get in the way of finding ourselves, it is because we have no personality.
I desperately want children. I want like four of them. But I will never have them, I mean at least with the current circumstances, living with my boyfriend.
Recently I've been participating in radio and television talk programs doing broadcasts and conferences, and shooting my mouth off and really going to town.
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.
I was little impressed with this rough and ready way of persuading people to renew their contracts and decided that I was now quite free of any obligations.
I still look good. I'm trippin', but people tell me that all the time. So check it out, I'm 63, and still kicking. I've been putting records out every year.
When I was recording from '70 to '82, I always played piano and laid the tracks down. But I used to talk to the other musicians while the track was playing.
The theatre is not the place for the musician. When the curtain is up the music interrupts the actor, and when it is down the music interrupts the audience.
If I got involved with the chat rooms and Facebook and everything - I would probably never leave. That's why I don't do it. I literally don't do it. At all.
I've often thought that we left the original 'Phantom' with a little bit of a cliff hanger, and I thought, 'Well, why not to do a sequel to it' at one point.
We forget that this music, music made by my brothers and sisters, is still a baby. It's just beginning. When I think of the possibilities, it makes me smile.
I kept my babies fed. I could have dumped them, but I didn't. I decided that whatever trip I was on, they were going with me. You're looking at a real daddy.
It is still true that it is easier to compose a poem in the form of a manual for adjusting a VCR than it is to write a piece using just tuning as a symphony.
I am more and more convinced that music is not, in essence, a thing which can be cast into a traditional and fixed form. It is made up of colors and rhythms.
I remember playing football dressed in peculiar costumes with some friends in France and laughing so hard we couldn't even stand up, let alone kick the ball.
I wanted to be a painter and an artist. And it's interesting that in some of my later musical works, I refer so often and associate myself with works of art.
Sometimes I write them down in musical notation as a trigger to remind me about certain directions to go. Or I can be specific about a sound I'm looking for.
Music has been taken over in this country by personalities and dominated by rock 'n' roll. There's been a synthesizer invasion and it's not going to go away.
The performance of performance has developed to such an extent in recent years that it challenges the music itself and will soon threaten it with relegation.
I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.
The most important thing is that it's much more fun to play in a band than to be in an audience in a club. That's the main thing I think, that you can do it.
I have always been of the opinion that when those in power are promoting actions and ideals that risk harming or impeding us, people should stand up to this.
Bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, who I respect, have a very robotic, dehumanised approach. They're almost an apology for machines. It's very German.
I collect robots. They're mainly Japanese, American, and especially Russian - small robots, big robots, and old toy robots made between 1910 and the Fifties.
Each day brings its own colours to be chosen, mixed, pigments of joy, happy moments, smiles and laughter.... And which will you choose? For 'Life' is choice.
You moan a lot and jingle your change But let's face it, there's no escape You can flick the remote as much as you like But she's on the TV and on every tape
Discipline is important as long as you're having a good time. What I always did was I did what I enjoyed, and I think that's why I don't have any grey hairs.
I was always drawn to Broadway musicals, and obviously composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter were writing music that I found wildly impressive.
There have been studies that clearly state that children who are exposed to arts education at a young age will in fact do markedly better in their SAT tests.
I love great lyrics, and I love the way it could shape a tune into a very unpredictable one, and I also like taking a great melody and putting lyrics into it.
What's really exciting for me is communicating to other people and not just going somewhere to make a movie. That's Hollywood to me and it would mean nothing.
I got started when I was 3 years old because my father was a music teacher and my lessons were free. Instead of learning to walk, you learn to play the piano.
Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?
The artist is a man who finds that the form or shape of things externally corresponds, in some strange way, to the movements of his mental and emotional life.
My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific!