Compositional Style Quotes

You listen to Handel operas, right? And there are a thousand of them, right? And they all sound alike. If I look back on my work, maybe it's the same thing.

I'm a very style-driven composer, and I like to give every project its own unique stamp.

Beethoven's reputation is based entirely on gossip. The middle Beethoven represents a supreme example of a composer on an ego trip.

Everything that has a spare piano is 'like Satie' and everything with strings is 'filmic,' Sometimes I get annoyed when they say my stuff sounds 'like Satie'. No, it doesn't. At least, I don't think so.

When I hear the piano played in a compositional way, like in a songwriter's way in a compositional way, there's a certain arc to that that I love.

It is hard to think of another composer who so perfectly marries form and passion.

I discovered that I didn't want to be strict like a German composer.

In fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind - not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written.

Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

If they say they don't like the way I play Beethoven, then I can swallow that, and maybe they're right. But if they don't like what I've written, then it's about me.

To George Gershwin, on refusinghim as a pupil: You would only lose the spontaneous quality of your melody, and end by writing bad Ravel.

I happen to love Saint-Saens in general. I think he's a brilliant composer and sometimes underrated in a way because people like to pass him off as fluffy and not being serious.