Famous Composer Quotes About Music

Those who write music often have very insightful things to say about it! Check out some of our favourites, in no particular order!

This list will be updated occasionally!

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Quotes

"I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colours for those who see none."

- Olivier Messiaen

"I wish you music to help with the burdens of life, and to help you release your happiness to others."

- Ludwig van Beethoven

"In music, things don't get better or worse: they evolve and transform themselves."

- Luciano Berio

"Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for: it has broadened the limits of our sorrowful life, it has lit up the sweetness of our hours of happiness by effacing the pettinesses that diminish us, bringing us back pure and new to what was, what will be, what music has created for us."

- Nadia Boulanger

"Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought."

- Franz Liszt

"There are so many beautiful things to be said in C Major."

- Sergei Prokofiev

"So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it."

- Aaron Copland

"To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist."

- Robert Schumann

"The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just make sure that one note follows another…and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world."

- Leonard Bernstein

"There is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound."

- Clara Schumann

"For me there is no White music or Black music - there is only music by individual men that is important if it attempts to dignify all men."

- William Grant Still

"People are allowed to find in my musical works anything what they want - I can't give any recommendations, my task is just to compose. There is only one thing I expect from listeners or critics and that's critical openness."

- Unsuk Chin

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