Krzysztof Penderecki Quotes

I currently spend a lot of time thinking about orchestration and every detail of a piece.

I was a schooled musician. When I made 'Blue Velvet', I told everyone what to do. I was an arranger. I learned music in school I told the band to play this. I told the guitar to do that.

I feel at home in an orchestral score.

I went to study some orchestration stuff because I got so inspired working with all the orchestras.

Let me say that I've never thought to conduct because the conductor has to think to the music before the orchestra. And the orchestra comes later. For me, it's terrible.

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.

Playing in an orchestra is where I learned the most about music.

I equate composing with orchestrating. I think my music in terms of an orchestra.

I actually don't like playing the piano or conducting the orchestra.

I'm a composer like every maestro on this earth.

At 13 I taught myself piano from an old song book, and Joni Mitchell's 'Both Sides Now' was the first song I learned.

I think John Williams, him and his team, have been incredible orchestrators. By that, I mean how he chooses which instrument plays which note.

I love conducting. What I'm tired of is music administration. I don't want that. I just want to make music.

My whole life, I've been watching conductors. I was 7 the first time I played with a conductor. Seeing the ones that do it well, it's an amazing thing.

I've been writing music since I was a teenager. I play keyboards. I'm not much of a player, but I can write. That will come along. I'd like to do a musical.

I think that the process of making music is a hard one to describe as well.

The problem is, when you're working with orchestras, you only get the orchestra for about two hours before the performance to pull it all together, and that doesn't sound like a real collaboration.

That is basically me, and although I have done many things in my life - conducting, playing piano, and so on - what is fundamental is my being a composer.

I consider myself a composer.

I worked hard learning harmony and theory when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1920s.

I don't want to write any more for the old Man-power instruments and am handicapped by the lack of adequate electrical instruments for which I now conceive my music.

I love doing concert music.

There was no such thing as production at Starday. We'd go in with the band, we'd go over the song, I'd look over and tell the steel player to take a break or kick it off, and I'd get the fiddle to play a turnaround in the middle.

You can find the whole world of a film in one instrument, or you can find a world of sound in the orchestra.

Musical practice is too young an art in America to warrant a search for men with a conductor's gift.