Franz Liszt Quotes

I always dreamed of writing in an orchestral context. But when you finish a piece, you want to hear it. So we played everything with Phish.

All the conductor has to do is stand back and try not to get in the way. Mozart is doing all the work.

Out of all the artistic things I do, music is the most rewarding because it's so hard to write songs.

I like to create the music I hear in my interior. As a conductor, you have the ability to squeeze the sounds and interpretation you asked for from 50 to 80 people.

I played piano, I learned a lot about music.

For me to rehearse with a children's orchestra a Mahler symphony was to really work. We had three or four weeks of rehearsal with the orchestra, every day eight or nine hours, putting the First together. I had been conducting Tchaikovsky a lot and Beethoven, but Mahler was different.

For me making music is part social, part interaction, part collaboration.

Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilized into time and tune.

The orchestra confides in me about their music director or their conductor, and I've never seen a conductor that's been liked by everyone.

I am so happy that I didn't go to school and I didn't have anyone to tell me how to position my fingers on the piano correctly. And what you do with music and what is the correct way to write it and what is not the correct way to write it.

Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts.

I put together the influences of my life in as clear a way as I possibly can, in the same way that Beethoven or Schoenberg or Bach put their influences together.

The parts I enjoy playing aren't really available to me. So I have to write them.

However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons.

I write music visually.

A song versus an album is not like a scene versus a play.

I hold all of the songs that I have had the pleasure of recording and performing in high regard.

I'm not a frustrated concert composer, and the concert pieces I've done have been a small part of my work. What I've sought there is instruction, variation from the demands of film and relief from its restrictions.

You don't go out and play Beethoven's 'Opus 111' without having rethought about it every time you play.

I am just trying to do a song the best possible way I can.

I think it's being innovative and very creative to stay away from flat-out sampling somebody else's record. To me, that doesn't show too much of your creative side unless you take a little piece and add it, almost like spice on a chicken.

I really like conducting my music in concerts because I'm convinced it's not just for films; it has its own life. It can live far away from the images of the movie.

Musicians should not play music. Music should play musicians.

I play guitar all the time, and I'm constantly thinking of songs... Every time I pick up a guitar, I come up with different riffs, all different bands I've been in. Sometimes there is a song or riff that could only belong with Slipknot, and I just can't use it for anything else, regardless of whatever happened.

My version of 'Fast Car' is in the same key as the original. To me that is where all the emotion lies.