Lukas Foss Quotes

So writing a song is much harder than doing a classical piece for me, because in a classical piece, I can just let the mood dictate what's going to happen.

I think a melody is a melody. And the way I usually start is I start writing my themes without even writing to picture to just try to find the tone for the movie or the TV show.

I love getting time to write a piece of music that can settle in and set the tone of the show.

I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.

Songwriting is hard - it's so easy to fall into the same traps. It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.

Sometimes I will click on a random sequence of notes- not to actually use it in a song, but to see if I can find maybe a simple pattern that I can build off of.

'Evita' was four pieces of slick paper and a record album. It's the most scary, to sit down and dictate a musical scene by scene. It was a musical unlike anything I'd ever seen before myself.

There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

I find I'm not one of these composers that are, you know, walking along a beach or walking on the mountainside in County Donegal that's, you know, 'Oh, a melody.' It's more a matter of eventually taking that moment with me to the studio, and it begins to evolve.

Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration.

As I sit down and start to work, I often panic. I stare at the empty piece of music paper. How can I say that my piece will be ready for performance next January when I do not have a recipe for making it happen?

You can't manufacture inspiration, so a lot of it is still a waiting game for me. There's still a lot of mystery to songwriting. I don't have a method that I can go back to - they either come or they don't.

It took me three weeks to write the 'Rhapsody in Blue.' I had always wanted to write something blue and Paul Whiteman inspired.

Do you think I'm wandering around all day thinking, 'I must write a song called 'Three Coins In The Fountain'?' Only an idiot would do that.

When you sample something, you're using the crutch of borrowing chords and melodies from a song that's already great, that's already stood the test of time, that's already special. When you're trying to do it all from scratch, you're writing something brand new that has to stand on its own.

Sometimes I write them down in musical notation as a trigger to remind me about certain directions to go. Or I can be specific about a sound I'm looking for.

I'm not an intellectual composer.

I write music visually.

The melody will tell me what the song should be about, the tone of the song. That's when the intellect comes in. Because I have a list of possible titles and concepts, and I expand on that.

I was in a state of gnawing, sensuous agitation that excited continually both blood and nerves when I sketched out the music for 'Tannhauser' and brought it to completion.

When I write the music for any of my songs, I write as a composer-lyricist in my head.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

It's rare when you stumble upon this amazing melody. We'd love to make a 'Let Me Love You' every time we go into the studio, but it's definitely a special one.

My films are musically inclined.

I would say that 'Creed' has a lot more music in it. It's 60 minutes of music, while 'Fruitvale' had about a fourth of that at best. There's a bigger focus in 'Creed' because I had to make music for training montages.