Top 60 Henry Mancini Quotes

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

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

I’m usually the last man on the totem pole. Except for the sound effects and the final sound mix, the score is the last element to be added to a picture.

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

You know, I started in movies a long time ago, and once in awhile I’m taken aback. Sometimes one of my things will come on – they use my things as background music all the time, in somebody else’s arrangements and It catches my ear.

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.

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

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

You can make or break a picture in the dubbing room.

The great thing about a record is it frees your imagination; it gives your eyes a rest and lets your mind wander. There’s the special thing that each record can mean a different thing to every person listening to it.

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

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

You know, directors are funny people. They live with these movies for a year or more. And when you go in to score the picture, you’re fooling with their child. They want to know everything that happens to the score – and why.

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

I’ve always been a dreamer.

I became a melodic writer after ‘Gunn.’

In the mid-1930s, a lot of the Big Bands sounded the same.

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

Blake Edwards has set up an extraordinary combination of moods in ‘Peter Gunn.’ When you stop to analyze it, you can’t find the boundaries where the music stops and the show takes over.

Cancer… changed my whole work attitude.

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.

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

You’re molded by the period you were brought up in.

I used to raise the devil when my father made me practice the flute and my mother made me take piano lessons.

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.

Success is not usually easy or fast.

You’ve got to be an editor in order to be a good composer.

When I play ‘Newhart’ in concert, it always gets a hand, right from the very beginning. To me, ‘Newhart’ is a hit.

If a film is not doing well, a record company will not take a chance with the score.

I have an Otari with a Korg T2 Midi synthesizer, a drum machine and a few effects units.

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.

I’ve turned down many pictures, mostly because I didn’t like them.

My profession has never demanded that I be mobbed by fans.

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.

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

I was always trying to be a quote, unquote, film composer.

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.

Some producers hang-on to that old cliche that if the audience hears the music, it is no good. I say this is so much talk. Music gives the film another dimension, if it’s done with the story in mind.

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.

I very rarely write anything before what I see what I’m writing for.

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.

I used to be selected for the Pennsylvania all-state orchestra. It was a thrill to go from my home town of Aliquippa clear across the state to Lancaster for the concerts. No kid is immune to that kind of experience.

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

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

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.

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

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

It’s very difficult to be funny musically. I think I achieved It with ‘The Pink Panther.’

My kids will come to me and ask me to listen to a ‘new sound’ they think they’ve discovered. One time it was the Beatles’ ‘Yesterday,’ and the new sound was four strings. All of a sudden the new generation discovers the string quartet!

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

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

I don’t usually take a picture if I don’t like it. I have that choice. But some pictures I like more than others.

It takes different mindsets to do different things.

I play a very streamlined piano.

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.

Most everything I’ve ever written has .been done to ‘assignment.’

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.

Sometimes memorable music doesn’t necessarily have to be a hit.