ComposerTalk.com

* Alexander Borodin: “I am a composer in search of oblivion; and I‘m always slightly ashamed to admit that I compose.” (Letter to Lydia Karmalina)

* Benjamin Britten: “One day I’ll be able to relax a bit, and try and become a good composer.” (Letter to Imogen Holst, 1968)

* Arthur Honegger: “The first requirement for a composer is to be dead.” (“Je suis compositeur,” 1951)

* Claudio Monteverdi: “The modern composer builds his works on the basis of truth.” (“Fifth Book of Madrigals” 1605, Preface)

* Ned Rorem: “If you read reviews of concerts, the word ‘creative’ comes up all the time. However, performers playing music usually aren’t creative. Critics might say they are, but they’re just playing another persons work. They didn’t create it.”

* Richard Strauss: “I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer!” (Quoted in Del Mar, Richard Strauss, 1962)

* Igor Stravinsky: “A good composer does not borrow, he steals.”

* Richard Wagner: “Joy is not in things, but in us.”

* Frank Zappa: “A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.” (The Real Frank Zappa Book)