Composers are the only people who can hear good music above bad sounds.

The average music-lover hears only the production under prevailing conditions.

From childhood I was passionately fond of music and wanted to be a musician. I have no recollection of any real desire ever to be anything else.

Grand opera is the most powerful of stage appeals and that almost entirely through the beauty of music.

The office of President is a great one; to every true American it seems the greatest on earth. And to me, as I was engaged in weaving a background of music for the pageantry of it, there came a deeper realization of the effect of that office on the man.

I still feel the impulse to give young writers a hearing, and I believe I have played more unpublished compositions than any other band leader in the country.

Remember always that the composer's pen is still mightier than the bow of the violinist; in you lie all the possibilities of the creation of beauty.