I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media.
Milton Babbitt

I dream of a collaboration that would finally be total, in which the librettist would often think as a composer and the composer as a librettist.
Jacques Ibert

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.
Esa-Pekka Salonen

I find respect for a mediocre British composer, as opposed to a really good American, ridiculous because they automatically respect a composer if he's from England.
John Corigliano

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.
Igor Stravinsky

I just have to take my chances like any other composer.
Gordon Getty

I like a composer called Henry Purcell, and I love to listen to Neil Young.
Cornelia Funke

I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.
Richard Strauss

I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.
Jascha Heifetz

I probably belong to a type of composer of songs who keeps thinking about melody... I am old fashioned.
Toru Takemitsu

I really liked doing a number of the projects and directors, and etc., etc., I knew about half-way through that I would never be doing that again. It's just not me. I really am happy as a part-time film composer, not a full-time film composer.
Danny Elfman

I shall always respect the composer. If I embellish, it is his idea I am embellishing.
Kate Smith

I think a composer is always interested in his last work.
Gyorgy Legeti

I think it's good for the composer to teach because you always have new students and you have to begin at the beginning and make things clear.
John Corigliano

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.
Fred Frith

I think the composer and production staff of an opera have a real responsibility to use visual elements of all kinds to make clear to the American audience, at any rate, exactly what is going on.
John Eaton

I was meant to be a composer and will be I'm sure. Don't ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football - please.
Samuel Barber

I would still love to do more Handel. I think Handel was a fantastic composer. I did lots of Vivaldi, but it's also important to do the music of Handel, one of the greatest composers of the 18th century.
Cecilia Bartoli

I'm glad I won it because when I grew up the Pulitzer was the award that every composer wanted and I was like that too.
John Corigliano

I'm not an architectural composer.
Harrison Birtwistle