Lukas Foss Quotes

“That is why the analogy of stealing does not work. With a thief, we want to know how much money he stole, and from whom. With the artist it is not how much he took and from whom, but what he did with it.”

— Lukas Foss

“Why do we pigeonhole and label an artist? It is a sure way of missing the important, the contradictory, the things that make him or her unique.”

— Lukas Foss

“Yes, influences are enriching, and they can be found in every work of art, even the most original.”

— Lukas Foss

“There is another interesting paradox here: by immersing ourselves in what we love, we find ourselves. We do not lose ourselves. One does not lose one's identity by falling in love.”

— Lukas Foss

“Great music does not just make me feel good. It means something. It makes us understand. It makes us happy.”

— Lukas Foss

“Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist.”

— Lukas Foss

“In the nineteenth century the more grandiose word inspiration began to replace the word idea in the arts.”

— Lukas Foss

“Personality is essential. It is in every work of art. When someone walks on stage for a performance and has charisma, everyone is convinced that he has personality. I find that charisma is merely a form of showmanship. Movie stars usually have it. A politician has to have it.”

— Lukas Foss

Mozart wrote so many works in his thirty-five years that it would take a lifetime just to write out the notes. We literally do not know how he did it.

— Lukas Foss

“If one uses music that one does not really love, then one will not succeed in making it one's own.”

— Lukas Foss

“It is obvious that anything a scientist discovers or invents is based on previous discoveries and inventions. The same applies to the arts.”

— Lukas Foss

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

— Lukas Foss

“The creative act is like writing a letter. A letter is a project; you don't sit down to write a letter unless you know what you want to say and to whom you want to say it.”

— Lukas Foss

“I strongly suggest that we play down basics like who influenced whom, and instead study the way the influence is transformed, in other words: how the artist made it his own.”

— Lukas Foss

“The best way to investigate the elusive phenomenon called the creative process may well be to target all the misconceptions, to explain what the creative process is not.”

— Lukas Foss

When I went back to visit my native Berlin after World War II, I noticed that the only thing I really remembered from my childhood Berlin days is the shoe store.

— Lukas Foss

“Anybody can put things together that belong together. to put things together that don't go together, and make it work, that takes genius like Mozart's. Yet he is presented in the play Amadeus as a kind of silly boy whom the gods loved.”

— Lukas Foss

“For years that may mean imitation. Then, one day, it is like a door opening, and a new thought comes in. Why not try this instead. Suddenly he is doing something original, almost in spite of himself.”

— Lukas Foss

“As I sit down and start to work, I often panic. I stare at the empty piece of music paper. How can I say that my piece will be ready for performance next January when I do not have a recipe for making it happen?”

— Lukas Foss

Most artists have experienced the creative block. We get stuck in our work. We beat our head against the wall: nothing. Sometimes, it is because we are trying something at the wrong time.

— Lukas Foss

“Any creator owes a debt to past creation.”

— Lukas Foss

“I don't dare postulate about science, but I know that it takes both emotion and intellect in order for art to happen.”

— Lukas Foss

I still do not know where the notes will come from when I accept a commission for a new work.

— Lukas Foss

“To come to grips with creativity, I must ask creative, adventurous questions - the kind which, in all likelihood, cannot be answered.”

— Lukas Foss

“To understand Mozart's contradictory qualities would indeed be to understand genius.”

— Lukas Foss

Truth is a big concept.

— Lukas Foss

My students frequently ask what their next project should be. My advice: immerse yourself in the music you love and you will find what you want to do; you will discover your next project.

— Lukas Foss

“The fact that Stravinsky used the classics as a major influence is obvious. What is interesting is how he used them, how he turned Bach into Stravinsky.”

— Lukas Foss

It is the element I miss in electronic music - no performance, no loving immersion. Maybe that is why I was never particularly drawn to electronic music.

— Lukas Foss

“To me, Mozart is our Shakespeare, the one who wrote the most dramatic, psychologically most baffling music. He combined ideas that no one else would have thought of putting together.”

— Lukas Foss

“Boulez's only concern is with power. He lost the leadership of the avant-guard more than ten years ago to Stockhausen. Now others have moved in. With the need for power, where was he to go? So he chose to be a conductor. He is a wonderful musician, a wonderful intelligence. It's a pity there is no humanity there. Does he have sex? I think not. When men have no sex, they go after power in this big, obsessive way.”

— Lukas Foss

Composing is like making love to the future.

— Lukas Foss