Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Hopefully the music of the future will not be all electronic. There is a place for it if it is used sparingly.
I've had pieces in my catalog that kind of amble along, that really never go anywhere, but are known and liked.
I'm no songwriter because all of my popular songs have just been outgrowths of themes for the various pictures.
The man who writes for hire has an obligation, if only to himself, to keep an open mind and to absorb new ideas.
When I play 'Newhart' in concert, it always gets a hand, right from the very beginning. To me, 'Newhart' is a hit.
In times of stress, I frequently remind myself that I'm doing what I want to do most and that's what really counts.
Some of the prettiest music I've done was in films that really were not a smash. Your music fares as the film does.
The Pavarotti and Galway albums were a lot of fun because I got to work with two of the best 'voices' in the world.
Some scenes cry out for a certain kind of treatment. The kind we're conditioned by years of film-watching to expect.
I've done entire scores for I don't know how many films and series. I never kept track; I suppose it's up in the hundreds.
I was never In a restaurant until after I left home. My mother came from Abruzzi and they're noted for their great cooking.
I don't think I've ever spent more than an hour on any one song, but that doesn't count the thinking that goes on beforehand.
Bassoon is not an easy instrument to play and to pick it up and play it like a flute or a saxophone is quite an accomplishment.
My father was a steelworker who'd come over from Abruzzi, in Italy. He played in the band and he encouraged me to be a musician.
I find I work best as a reactor, trying to portray something on a screen musically. If I were a boxer, I'd be a counter-puncher.
You know, my career hasn't exactly been the sort of thing that usually happens to film composers, but I sure am glad it happened to me.
Writing for TV or films isn't great art. You have to have a common denominator. It's up to the composer to make that common denominator memorable.
Writing music is very, very clinical. You just sit down at a piano, map out a theme and when all the technicalities come together, out pours the music.
I'm usually the last man on the totem pole. Except for the sound effects and the final sound mix, the score is the last element to be added to a picture.
Music has been taken over in this country by personalities and dominated by rock 'n' roll. There's been a synthesizer invasion and it's not going to go away.
Amplification of guitars revolutionized the popular music scene. Youngsters look for quick fame and big money with amplified guitars and working with rock groups.
I just think the time and where I was brought up had a great deal to do in giving me the ambition to kind of get out and do something and not go into the steel mill.
Most people are oriented to words. When the public hears a melody, unless you put words to It, it takes longer to penetrate. It's always been like that, but I don't know why.
Sometimes people can see a movie of mine and not know until the credits roll that I wrote the score. That makes me feel good, that I can get out of that box every once in a while.
The most immediately gratifying thing about my work is conducting a large orchestra. But the long range payoff is composing because you've written something and it's there forever.
Blake Edwards has set up an extraordinary combination of moods in 'Peter Gunn.' When you stop to analyze it, you can't find the boundaries where the music stops and the show takes over.
When I first began to work in pictures I tried to attract the attention of film critics, but I don't make movies to please them or myself anymore. I look for material that will entertain.
A good theme - like the 'Pink Panther' or 'Baby Elephant Walk' - can work all the way through the picture, which is what I did with them. So, for me, a good melody is not just a pretty tune.
Some producers hang-on to that old cliche that if the audience hears the music, it is no good. I say this is so much talk. Music gives the film another dimension, if it's done with the story in mind.
Jazz is capable of doing much more than depicting the dope fiend and the drunk and the slinky gal. In our show there are many very funny sequences where we were able to use jazz as it can be used-in a happy way.
I used to be selected for the Pennsylvania all-state orchestra. It was a thrill to go from my home town of Aliquippa clear across the state to Lancaster for the concerts. No kid is immune to that kind of experience.
It took me a long time to figure out what Holly Golightly was all about. One night after midnight I was still trying. I don't drink much, but I was sipping. And it came to me. I wrote [“Moon River”] in half an hour.
The great thing about a record is it frees your imagination; it gives your eyes a rest and lets your mind wander. There's the special thing that each record can mean a different thing to every person listening to it.
You know, directors are funny people. They live with these movies for a year or more. And when you go in to score the picture, you're fooling with their child. They want to know everything that happens to the score - and why.
As a screen composer or film-music writer, I need something that I can work with in the body of the score. Like 'Charade,' 'Moon River,' 'Wine and Roses,' 'Dear Heart' - they were all just themes that grew out of the picture.
When someone asks me to do a score, I look at the picture two or three times. I never watch the rushes to pick up the mood as quickly as I can. If it's something I want to do, just watching the film will start the wheels turning.
You know, I started in movies a long time ago, and once in awhile I'm taken aback. Sometimes one of my things will come on - they use my things as background music all the time, in somebody else's arrangements and It catches my ear.
My kids will come to me and ask me to listen to a 'new sound' they think they've discovered. One time it was the Beatles' 'Yesterday,' and the new sound was four strings. All of a sudden the new generation discovers the string quartet!
If you're feeling fancy free, come wander through the world with me, and any place we chance to be, will be a rendezvous. Two for the road, we'll travel through the years, collecting precious memories, selecting souvenirs and living life the way we please.
Quite a few of The Rolling Stones records have had a great honesty about them. In fact, I would put them side-by-side with a 'Treasury of Folk Music' collection, containing all the prison songs, the farm and road-gang songs that were recorded on the spot in the Deep South.
With the new technology that keeps entering the media, film composers are constantly being placed in new learning situations. Acknowledging this and realizing that one must keep up, I maintain, nonetheless, that the real creative power is in the mind and heart of the composer.
In 'Charade,' there was a big fight. George Kennedy was playing one of his first big heavy roles; he had a hook for a hand, and he was real ugly. Cary Grant was Cary Grant. They were on a slanted roof, a very exciting fight, and we agreed there shouldn't be any music, just the grunts and the action.