Music Quotations by Musicians, Composers & Famous People

Aaron Copland Quotations Aaron Copland’s life and music spanned the 20th century and he was considered by most to be America’s most ‘American sounding’ composer. In addition to superb use ...

Albert Camus Quotations The Algerian born French writer and philosopher, Albert Camus, was the second youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first being Rudyard Kipling. Camus is ...

Albert Einstein Quotations Albert Einstein, named by Time Magazine in 1999 as the “Person of the Century,” wrote his 1st scientific paper at age 15 and by age 21 earned ...

Albert Schweitzer Quotations Albert Schweitzer, humanitarian, organist, JS Bach scholar, Lutheran pastor and African missionary, who won the 1952 Nobel Peace prize for founding and running the Lambarene Hospital in ...

Andre Gide Quotations Andre Gide was a French author, humanist, and moralist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947. Gide has always appealed to different audiences: a traditional ...

Aretha Franklin Quotations The youngest recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor and the first black woman to appear on the cover of Time magazine, Aretha Franklin is an American singer, songwriter, and ...

Bedrich Smetana Quotes Bedrich Smetana was a Czech composer in the 1800's that was known as the father of Czech music. Internationally he is best known for his opera The ...

Bela Bartok Quotes Bela Bartok was a Hungarian composer and pianist He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century. Bela Bartok and Franz Liszt are ...

Billie Holiday Quotes Born Eleanora Fagan, later nicknamed Lady Day, Billie Holiday is regarded as one of the greatest female jazz vocalists of all time. She started singing for tips in the ...

Bob Dylan Quotes Originally from the Iron Range near Lake Superior, MN, Bob Dylan began as a Minnesota folk music artist and expanded his café and concert performances to many ...

Camille Saint-Saëns Quotes Camille Saint-Saëns was a French composer, organist, conductor, and pianist in the 1800's. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, the Second Piano Concerto, The First ...

César Franck Quotes César Franck was a Belgian-French composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris in the 1800's. Franck's is known for compositions written in his later ...

Charles Gounod Quotes Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been Faust; his Romeo and Juliette are two of his ...

Christoph Willibald Gluck Quotes Christoph Willibald Gluck was a composer of Italian and French opera in the classical period. Gluck was popular and widely credited with bringing about a revolution ...

Claude Debussy Quotes Claude Debussy is perhaps the most influential French composer in western music. His influence was prominently felt for composers who were contemporaries and in the decades to ...

Edgar Meyer Quotes Bonnett and I are big fans of the renowned double bassist and composer and 3-time Grammy Award winner, Edgar Meyer. We own 3 of his CD’s and ...

Edvard Grieg Quotes Edvard Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the main Romantic era composers. His use and development of Norwegian folk music ...

Frank Zappa Quotations Frank Vincent Zappa, wanted to be known, first and foremost, as an American composer, for which he excelled in both pop and classical music mediums, producing over ...

Franz Liszt Quotes Franz Liszt was a Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, and organist of the Romantic era. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists ...

Gabriel Fauré Quotes Gabriel Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and educator. He was one of the most well-known French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced ...

George Bernard Shaw Quotes Image: George Bernard Shaw, playwright and political activist “There are some experiences in life that should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of ...

Georges Bizet Quotes Georges Bizet was a French composer of the Romantic era. He is known for his operas but his musical career was short due to his early death. ...

Giacomo Puccini Quotes Giacomo Puccini was an Italian composer known mostly for his operas. His most known works are La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, all are among the ...

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Quotes Composer Giovanni Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known of the Roman School of musical composition. He influenced the development ...

Igor Stravinsky Quotations Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, considered to be the most influential music composer of modern times, was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the ...

Jacob Ter Veldhuis – JacobTV Quotes Jacob TV composes classical music that often goes against the grain of current trends in classical music and often incorporates forms of expression using ...

Jean-Baptiste Lully Quotes Italian-born French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully served the French court as a composer, dancer, conductor, and performing musician. He composed operas, ballets, and sacred music lived a colorful ...

Jean-Philippe Rameau Quotes Jean-Philippe Rameau was a French composer and music theorist of the 18th century. He was almost fifty years of age before he started his career in opera ...

Jennifer Higdon Quotations I recently met composer Jennifer Higdon, through an event sponsored by the American Composers Forum. We learned a good deal about her compositional process and her approach ...

Johann Sebastian Bach Quotations My guess is that the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach have been, and continue to be, the most studied and performed pieces by any know composer ...

Joni Mitchell Quotations This recent synchronous happening revolving around Joni Mitchell went like this: After a meal out, Bonne and I were having a leisure wander about in Barnes and ...

Jules Massenet, Quotes Prolific French composer Jules Massenet wrote operas, songs, oratorios, cantatas, ballets, orchestral works, and incidental music. His commercial success, judged as pandering to female singers and women-dominated ...

Leonard Bernstein Quotations As a pianist, conductor, composer, educator, and long-time music director of the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein received worldwide acclaim for his wide-ranging musical genius. As a ...

Louis Armstrong Quotes Louis Armstrong influenced jazz to move towards solo instrumental improvisations in contrast to the group improvisational playing characteristic of Dixieland jazz. He was the most well known ...

Maurice Ravel Quotes Maurice Ravel was a French composer, pianist and conductor. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally known as France's greatest living composer. Ravel was among the ...

Maya Angelou Quotes An important figure in the American Civil Rights Movement, Maya Angelou is also an author, actress and playwright. Her autobiography, ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,’ ...

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Quotes Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was an outstanding composer of the late 1800s into the early 20th century. He is best known for his works Sheharazad and Symphonie Espaniol. His influence ...

Oprah Winfrey Quotations Possibly the most influential woman in the world, Oprah Winfrey is host to The Oprah Winfrey Show, the highest rated talk show in television history. She is also ...

Paul Simon Quotes The singer and songwriter, Paul Simon, won the Gershwin prize for popular song, in 2007. Image: Musician Paul Simon performing on stage “Being an artist doesn’t mean ...

Peter Tchaikovsky Quotes Peter Tchaikovsky, the famous Russian composer of the 1800s, is best known in our times for his ballets, most significantly, the Nutcracker, which is performed annually by ...

Ralph Vaughan Williams Quotes Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 – 1958) was both a composer and a musicologist, who collected English folk music and songs, which he used liberally in his ...

Sheryl Crow Quotations The American rock singer, guitarist, and songwriter, Sheryl Crow blends country, folk, pop and blues into a mainstream sound that combines sunny rock tunes with world-weary ballads. ...

Sting Quotations Here are some quotations by Sting, the name given him by a fellow musician many years before he became famous as the songwriter and vocalist for the band ...

Tony Bennett Quotations Tony Bennett, who is widely considered to be one of the best singers of the past two centuries, is an American icon who saw his career decline ...