I'm not an intellectual composer.
Les Baxter

I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.
Leonard Bernstein

I'm trying to interpret the film through the director's head, but it all comes out through me. So, a composer is kind of like a psychic medium.
Danny Elfman

I've always been a composer dependent on texts.
David Del Tredici

I've come up with another formulation about style: that it's essentially a manifestation of a certain habitual set of limitations. It's what a composer does NOT do that defines a style.
James Tenney

I've had those people very interested in my writing. Since I think of myself as a composer, I feel really good. I've had lots of guys call me up. I've gotten two or three commissions to write things. I've written lots of movie scores.
Ornette Coleman

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
Gustav Mahler

If a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?
Charles Ives

If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what to do, and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed.
Alfred Brendel

If the composer withholds more than we anticipate, we experience a delicious falling sensation; we feel we have been torn from a stable point on the musical ladder and thrust into the void.
Levi Strauss

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.
Peter Maxwell Davies

If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

In any case, Ives encouraged me to go into music even though he himself had such a hard time being a composer.
Elliott Carter

Intelligent analysis of the composer's intention and strict adherence to it automatically ensures sincerity.
Kate Smith

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.
Leo Ornstein

It is conceivable that what is unified form to the author or composer may of necessity be formless to his audience.
Charles Ives

It is my hope that during my brief passage through this universe, that I may share with you the joy of hearing the music of the stars... knowing that the composer was from a distant place and the songs were written eons ago, which now fall gently on this place for all to hear.
Richard H. Baker

It's hard to decide how to match words to music. It's not like it's twice the work. It's always difficult for me to explain to the composer what I'm looking for. I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music.
Ayumi Hamasaki

It's nice to have a great female composer in the program and add her color.
Cecilia Bartoli

It's not a special taste. An American composer should have something to say to a cab driver.
Morton Gould