Henry Mancini Quotes

The most immediately gratifying thing about my work is conducting a large orchestra. But the long range payoff is composing because you’ve written something and it’s there forever.

Broadway is intimidating. Don’t think it’s not.

I just love what I do.

I’ve had pieces in my catalog that kind of amble along, that really never go anywhere, but are known and liked.

Hopefully the music of the future will not be all electronic. There is a place for it if it is used sparingly.

I just think the time and where I was brought up had a great deal to do in giving me the ambition to kind of get out and do something and not go into the steel mill.

Getting out and being able to present a concert is invigorating.

Stravinsky influenced film music in general – those stabbing chords and rhythms from ‘The Rite of Spring.’

Technique is superficial. The method used in applying technique is what gives music its character.

I don’t pretend to want to write the Great American Symphony.

It takes different mindsets to do different things.

I score everything by hand on manuscript paper and then make copies.

I’ve done entire scores for I don’t know how many films and series. I never kept track; I suppose it’s up in the hundreds.

Film music, over the years, has taken from everybody.

As a screen composer or film-music writer, I need something that I can work with in the body of the score. Like ‘Charade,’ ‘Moon River,’ ‘Wine and Roses,’ ‘Dear Heart’ – they were all just themes that grew out of the picture.

I just write when the bell rings. I don’t have time to wait for inspiration.

Music forced into the air you breathe is an invasion of privacy!

Music has been taken over in this country by personalities and dominated by rock ‘n’ roll. There’s been a synthesizer invasion and it’s not going to go away.

I compose the music according to the nature of the show. ‘Peter Gunn’s’ focus was violence so that was my key.

Music is constantly developing and changing.

My father started me out on the flute and I began going to teachers.

I wanted to be up there with all those names like Max Steiner.

When I first began to work in pictures I tried to attract the attention of film critics, but I don’t make movies to please them or myself anymore. I look for material that will entertain.

I don’t want to get corny, but my career really has been the personification of the American dream.

I wanted to write picture music ever since I was a kid.

In ‘Charade,’ there was a big fight. George Kennedy was playing one of his first big heavy roles; he had a hook for a hand, and he was real ugly. Cary Grant was Cary Grant. They were on a slanted roof, a very exciting fight, and we agreed there shouldn’t be any music, just the grunts and the action.

Sometimes people can see a movie of mine and not know until the credits roll that I wrote the score. That makes me feel good, that I can get out of that box every once in a while.

You know, my career hasn’t exactly been the sort of thing that usually happens to film composers, but I sure am glad it happened to me.

If you call making people smile with ‘The Pink Panther,’ then I made a contribution.

Cancer… changed my whole work attitude.

I don’t like to surprise anyone with the music I compose for a film. That way, there is less trouble later on.

I don’t have a trunk of manuscripts.

Writing for TV or films isn’t great art. You have to have a common denominator. It’s up to the composer to make that common denominator memorable.

Most people are oriented to words. When the public hears a melody, unless you put words to It, it takes longer to penetrate. It’s always been like that, but I don’t know why.

My father was a steelworker who’d come over from Abruzzi, in Italy. He played in the band and he encouraged me to be a musician.

Some of the prettiest music I’ve done was in films that really were not a smash. Your music fares as the film does.

In times of stress, I frequently remind myself that I’m doing what I want to do most and that’s what really counts.

Oh, I’d been writing cartoonish music pretty much all along.

I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than an hour on any one song, but that doesn’t count the thinking that goes on beforehand.

I’ve always been a dreamer.

Some scenes cry out for a certain kind of treatment. The kind we’re conditioned by years of film-watching to expect.

Bassoon is not an easy instrument to play and to pick it up and play it like a flute or a saxophone is quite an accomplishment.

If I’m writing songs for a country-Western picture, I have to know about country music.

People love to hear a guy who is really good on his instrument. They love to watch him go.

Too many schools across the country have cut back heavily on their music curricula.

I hate to do anything halfway so I leave the guitar alone.

The basic problem with young people entering show business is that they are in a hurry.

I became a melodic writer after ‘Gunn.’

Amplification of guitars revolutionized the popular music scene. Youngsters look for quick fame and big money with amplified guitars and working with rock groups.

I find I work best as a reactor, trying to portray something on a screen musically. If I were a boxer, I’d be a counter-puncher.

I read magazines and reviews. If consensus says something is good, I’ll get it and see what’s going on.

I equate composing with orchestrating. I think my music in terms of an orchestra.

Quite a few of The Rolling Stones records have had a great honesty about them. In fact, I would put them side-by-side with a ‘Treasury of Folk Music’ collection, containing all the prison songs, the farm and road-gang songs that were recorded on the spot in the Deep South.

A good theme – like the ‘Pink Panther’ or ‘Baby Elephant Walk’ – can work all the way through the picture, which is what I did with them. So, for me, a good melody is not just a pretty tune.

Erroll Garner is one of the few musicians I believe has a sense of humor in his music.