Composer's Role Quotes

When you build a building, you finish a building. You don't finish a garden; you start it, and then it carries on with its life. So my analogy was really to say that we composers or some of us should think of ourselves as people who start processes rather than finish them. And there might be surprises.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.

When I compose for any film, I always work with the story in mind.

A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.

I don't ascribe to the idea of the ivory tower composer who sits alone in a room composing his masterpieces and then comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets. It doesn't work like that. The job of a composer is putting something down on a piece of paper that will inspire the person who's playing.

So, it becomes an exercise in futility if you write something that does not express the film as the director wishes. It's still their ball game. It's their show. I think any successful composer learns how to dance around the director's impulses.

I feel a composer should not crave to sing songs because songs itself decides its voice. The films where I have given music, I have kept my option for the last. I like to make music and not necessarily singing all the songs.

I'm trying to interpret the film through the director's head, but it all comes out through me. So, a composer is kind of like a psychic medium.

It's not a special taste. An American composer should have something to say to a cab driver.

If you're a film composer, you have the music tell the story of the character.

I am proud to say I'm a director's composer. People do method acting, I do method composing. I like to get into the skin of the character and go deep into the director's vision.

You've all seen movies where the music isn't working with the story. And it's either because... the story isn't working itself. Or the composer kinda just wants to write whatever they want to write, not paying attention to the thing.

Composers, like authors, have a lot in common. Our main goal is to connect with the listener emotionally.

Conducting is a natural way to participate in one's own music. Almost every 19th-century composer Mendelssohn, Mahler was conducting or playing his own music. Mozart did both.

I usually like to introduce the film and the music with the opening titles. It's a great help for a composer to bring the audience into the work that we're going into.

Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.

Every song that I compose has to satisfy the music director in me.