# Composer and musician quotes you found interesting



## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

I kind of wanted a thread like this - I'm just going to use this to post interview statements, quotes, or writings from composers and musicians I found interesting- whether they're provocative, agreeable, disagreeable, poetic, funny or just struck me in the moment.

Anyone is free to respond how they want- however my intent for this thread is to be more of a loose collection of quotes, and not a long rolling discourse about any individual composer or quote (if something _really_ strikes you, start a thread about it!). So I probably won't be responding about any quote from two pages ago, or something.

Fredric Rzewski - 11/1/2002 (https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/frederic-rzewski-visits-america/3/)


> There are no surrealist composers. There are people who are kind of cousins of the surrealists like Erik Satie, or you could point to early Schoenberg or Mahler or Morton Feldman. But there are no composers who, [like jazz musicians], simply explore stream of consciousness methods of writing. Composers in the 20th century tend to be more like scientists or mathematicians than poets. I think it has to do with the fact that so-called serious music is still a descendant of sacred music. It's secular, but there's division between serious and light, which is very clear in music as opposed to other forms of expression. It's still related to the division of sacred and secular. So composers are still very much a part of the Christian theological tradition, if you like. And so, the unconscious mind, and everything connected with it, is still, so to speak, anathema. And this is the area that interests me.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Morton Subotnick (2011)
https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/morton-subotnick-2011


> The story, that will also reflect back on Milhaud, is he hated my music but he loved me and he loved the fact I was sort of like him when he was young. So when I finished my degree he offered me a fellowship to come to Aspen.
> 
> [...]
> 
> ...


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Morton Feldman (1967)
https://www.musicandliterature.org/...rton-feldman-interviewed-by-jean-yves-bosseur


> JYB: What do you think about the influence of Cage?
> 
> MF: What do you think about the influence of Socrates?
> 
> ...


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

There a re a few already, for your browsing pleasure...

Curious quotes
Quotes
Classical quotes
Composer on Composer Quotes
Heartbreaking Composer quotes

:tiphat:


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

I did a search for quote threads, but I couldn't find one with a newest post from this year (I tend not to like bumping very old threads)


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"The Mahler Cult"


peeyaj said:


> Bernard Haitink on what he says about Mahler's excess:
> 
> _Es ist ein Steckenpferd von mir und eine grosse Sorge. Dieser Mahler-Kult: Es gibt Leute, die nur zu einem Konzert kommen, wenn Mahler gespielt wird. Nach einer Aufführung von Mahlers dritte Sinfonie habe ich einmal einen Brief gekommen: 'Ich war so gerührt, ich habe das ganze Stück über geheult.' Fast hatte ichzurückgeschrieben: 'Sie sollten einen Psychiater aufsuchen'. Das habe ich natürlich nicht getan. Es sind Einzelfälle, aber dieser Mahler-Kult - damit wird Mahler nicht gedient. Aber es ist so, und vielleicht wird es nach diesem Jubiläum wieder weniger werden.
> _
> ...


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"The music which the masters have assimilated in their childhood forms the texture of their musical development. It cannot be otherwise and I am unable to understand why the great educators of our age do not lay even greater stress upon this all-important point. I have said assimilated,—you will notice that I did not say appropriated. That is quite a different matter. The music is absorbed and goes through a process of mental digestion until it becomes a part of the person, just as much as the hair on their heads, or the skin on their bodies. It is stored away in their brain-cells and will come forth again in the minds of creative musicians, not in the same or even similar form, but often in entirely new and wonderful conceptions." —Gustav Mahler


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Frederic Rzewski - 11/1/2002 (https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/frederi...its-america/3/)


> There are no surrealist composers. There are people who are kind of cousins of the surrealists like Erik Satie, or you could point to early Schoenberg or Mahler or Morton Feldman.


There are no *realist* composers either, or in any case "realism" is not a major part of the tradition of music, unlike in painting and sculpture. That's why "surrealism" or "abstractionism" does hardly make sense in music, certainly not as it does in visual arts. One might as well say that music was surreal and abstract already most of the time.



> But there are no composers who, [like jazz musicians], simply explore stream of consciousness methods of writing. Composers in the 20th century tend to be more like scientists or mathematicians than poets.


But at least some composers in the 19th century tended to be more like poets or prophets than scientists. So Rzewski seems to be deploring a feature of the counterreaction of modernity against romanticism, not something that has always been lacking.
There is a famous quotation by the mathematician Leibniz that music was an unconscious calculation of the mind. And he apparently got this idea from 17th/18th century music... "Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi."


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Here's a few that I like.

Arnold Schoenberg: “If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.”

Claude Debussy: “Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.”

Bela Bartok: “Competitions are for horses, not artists.”

John Cage: “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

And this one....


Edgard Varese: “Contrary to general belief, an artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs.”


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Kreisler jr said:


> Frederic Rzewski - 11/1/2002 (https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/frederi...its-america/3/)
> 
> There are no *realist* composers either, or in any case "realism" is not a major part of the tradition of music, unlike in painting and sculpture. That's why "surrealism" or "abstractionism" does hardly make sense in music, certainly not as it does in visual arts. One might as well say that music was surreal and abstract already most of the time.
> 
> ...


Oh, I frequently find Rzewski to be wrong but wrong in an interesting way. You sometimes get the impression that he was one of those guys who liked to start arguments about music because he enjoyed musical discourse.

Incidentally in the files of "contemporary composers who love romantic composers", according to Igor Levit, he thought the greatest work of the 20th Century was Strauss' "Four Last Songs"


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## mossyembankment (Jul 28, 2020)

Schumann on Schubert:

"There was a time when I spoke unwillingly of Schubert, who should only be spoken of at night in the midst of the forests and the stars."


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I'm wary of one-liners, not only because they are quoted out of context but also because their accuracy can be doubtful.

Recently I've been reading about Franck. A number of sources quote Gounod's apparent reaction after first hearing Franck's symphony, that it was "the negation of music" and "incompetence pushed to dogmatic lengths." The accuracy of this has been questioned. Its likely to be a distortion of whatever Gounod said made by his opponents (who may well have been Franck's supporters). It reflects rival cliques on the Paris musical scene at the time. Otherwise, there is a strong record of Gounod repeatedly saying that Franck was a great artist, even though he sometimes criticised certain aspects of his music.

One of my favourite quotes is by the Australian composer Richard Meale. It's from an interview he gave in 1990:

_"There is no progress in music, there's only change. Change and difference are perfectly adequate words to describe what happens. The practice of art is its existence."_


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