“The model of a composer.”

One day I’ll be able to relax a bit, and try and become a good composer.

These two are not two, love has made them one. Amo Ergo Sum! And by its mystery each is no less but more.

Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house-the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.

I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music.

The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.

Composing is like driving down a foggy road.

I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like.

Music does not excite until it is performed.

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful.

I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers.

I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers.

For my qualifying concert, Helmut Walcha would not coach Charles-Marie Widor or any American compositions. In his defense, his forte was Germanic composers, and his forte was really a fortissimo!

It may well be that some composers do not believe in God. All of them, however, believe in Bach.

I have written six symphonies, they are smaller-scale works. I seem to emit my themes, work them out, combine and intertwine them, and then come to a close. I usually feel that there are no superfluous extras, but probably most composers feel that way about their works.

The challenge to the composer is to get spontaneity into his permanence.

Men have been in the forefront of music for centuries, and they have written glorious music, loved and appreciated by many. In some ways, men are still in the forefront. There is a lot of room for composers of all types of music by both men and women, nowadays.

And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me.

I hadn’t realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to somewhere even the composer hadn’t predicted. It left an imprint in the air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you went.