Any asshole can write a tone-row. It takes a composer to write a tune.
A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.
To be a success as a Broadway composer, you must be Jewish or gay. I'm both.
The most difficult instrument to play in the orchestra is second fiddle.
You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something. It doesn't matter what. In five or ten minutes, the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over.