There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead. - Arthur Honegger
The public doesn't want new music; the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead. - Arthur Honegger
Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down. - Hector Berlioz
A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians. - Frank Zappa
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
The artist must forget the audience, forget the critics, forget the technique, forget everything but love for the music.Then, the music speaks through the performance,and the performer and the listener will walk togetherwith the soul of the composer, and withGod. - Mstislav Rostropovich
In the Belgian backwaters, south of Bruges, there lives a reclusive English composer, named Vyvyan Ayrs. You won’t have heard of him because you’re a musical oaf, but he’s one of the greats. - David Mitchell
I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition." (Said to Leopold Mozart) - Joseph Haydn
I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son (W A Mozart)is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition. - Joseph Haydn