Composition Quotes

“I think that the best pictures are often on the edges of any situation.”

“Look for the light. The light is everything.”

“For me, melody is the most important thing.”

“I've tried to be a sponge, in a way. I've soaked up a lot of things, and I've tried to give them back in a different form.”

“I set down a beautiful chord on paper... and suddenly it rusts.”

“My music is a dramatisation of the process of thinking.”

“I don't think there's any such thing as a 'serious' composer or a 'light' composer. There are just good composers and bad composers.”

“Composition is a way of organizing sound, but it's also a way of organizing your life.”

“The problem is to find a form that accommodates the mess.”

“I am interested in things that are formally ambiguous.”

“The work of a composer is not to invent tunes but to release the music that is already there in the words.”

“I was trying to create a mood, a feeling... an atmosphere.”

“You have to have a great deal of arrogance to be a composer.”

“What do you do with a popular melody? You can't just play it and repeat it. You have to do something with it.”

“Electronic music just has a wider palette of sounds than an orchestra.”

“What we call the elements of art are not just abstract components; they are forces, vectors that push and pull.”

“I think tonality is a wonderful thing, but I don't think it's the only thing.”

“To be a composer, you have to have a feeling for harmony and for melody and for rhythm.”

“The most important thing for a composer is to have a voice of his own.”

“I have always believed in the importance of dynamics, the importance of silence, the importance of space.”