Composers need words, but they do not necessarily need poetry. The Russian composer, Aleksandr Mossolov, who chose texts from newspaper small ads, had a good point to make. With revolutionary music, any text can be set to work.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've always been a composer dependent on texts.
Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts.
I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work - the best and the worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively little.
I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.
There are wonderful composers and librettists out there. It's the lack of creative producers that is troubling.
The 1960s was a period when writers in the West began to be aware of the extraordinary eloquence and popular attraction of the Russian poets such as Yevtushenko and Voznesensky - oppositional figures who could draw crowds. The Russian poets recited from memory as a matter of course.
Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
I like to read and dream and create music that is based on the imagery of text. If you have the combination of a great book and a great filmmaker, what could be better for the composer?
I don't use composers. I research music the way I research the photographs or the facts in my scripts.