Add Your Own Composition-Related Maxim.

Share your own piece of compositional wisdom in the form of a short saying or maxim. Over time, we can have a compilation of composition-related maxims and wisdom that will be helpful to every composer.

Mine is:

If you look closely and listen carefully, the piece you have just completed points the way to your next composition.

Maybe one too many new posts for one day...

Mine is:

"Say a little; Say a lot."

"Nobody cares about apothegms you make up."

Write for real players, or your music will never be played, ever.

don't make 12 threads at one time

Erm. Just write. Show your stuff to other people (composers, performers, musically-challenged people[!]). Rewrite... :D

simplicity is beauty and complexity is excitment

Albert Einstein was not a composer...per se, but.....

"Imagination is more important than knowledge"........

wow,

just imagine.....

Composition is ever about self-assurance. Never diverge from your true course - neither by praise, nor by criticism.

Music is about the contrast and balance between regularity and irregularity, pattern and free form.

The essence of creativity lies unquestionably amidst the moments of pleasure and desire.

"Music is the art of thinking with sounds."

Jules Combarieu

"Music means itself."

Eduard Hanslick

as my dad always says:

"B+"

"No pride & no prejudices".

Write at least one great thing in a variety of styles, if you can.

A great passage composed already holds in itself the keys to a great piece. One need only look hard at it and one will "discover" and "trace" the whole piece from it.

All consonance proceeds from dissonance, is arrived at or discerned from a giant pool of dissonances. Therefore, in order to arrive at original consonances, you have to hear (and allow to be heard) the original dissonances from which they proceed, indeed must needs proceed.

Not my own, but have guided me immensely:

"Two musicians coming together to play a piece of music has to be interesting, even if the results are not in themselves a great piece of music. The way they find to work with each each other say something about music....Even if it's not working in completed music terms, the process is one of the most interesting listening experiences you can get." - Derek Bailey

"Here we are: Kagel, 'Improvisation Ajoutée.' I bought this when I was about 15. Still marked: got it at Sam Goody in September, for 98 cents. And it's a really crazy piece, with the guys screaming and hooting, something that attracted me. I was over at my friend's house, and he really liked the Rolling Stones. And I just got this record, and I put it on and he looked at me like... who the hell are you? Are you out of your mind? And his mother was there, and she was like [puts palm on cheek] my God, take this off... and right then and there, I decided: this was the music." - John Zorn

Here's an interesting set of 13 advices for young composers (maxim-like title followed by a discussion) by a young composer:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/the-score-advice-to-young-composers/