Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 1 : Music and Sound
“As a teenager I had already arranged pieces for the school band in exchange for music lessons. I also played cello, clarinet, and some other instruments regularly. Thanks to that experience, as an arranger I was able to understand the specific sound and tuning of an instrument and to work intuitively.”
As quoted in "Clare Fischer: The Best Kept Secret in Jazz" http://www.artistinterviews.eu/?page_id=5&parent_id=22/ by Maarten De Haan, in Artist Interview (1998)
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Clare Fischer 48
American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader 1928–2012Related quotes

As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview I" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1992)

Read from his musical diaries while speaking at St. Vladimir’s Seminary https://vimeo.com/221011528/

Source: An Interview with Leon Theremin http://www.oddmusic.com/theremin/theremin_interview_1.html / Olivia Mattis and Leon Theremin in Bourges, France 16 June 1989.

After all, it’s more useful to know how to drive a car than it is to know what makes it go. Of course it’s important to know certain things about a machine, but I don’t need to be able to build my own synthesizer. It strikes me that the people who do build them don’t know how to play them, so l’d rather find out more about playing".
1984

Source: "Powerful Song, Man" by Jeffrey Tucker, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, August 1997, UNZ.org, 2016-05-22 http://www.unz.org/Pub/RothbardRockwellReport-1997aug-00009,

At the end of the Civil War, asking that a military band play "Dixie" (10 April 1865) as quoted in Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (1962) by Hans Nathan. Variant account: "I have always thought "Dixie" one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it... I now request the band to favor me with its performance".
1860s
From American Gothic: An Interview with Elliott Carter http://edwebproject.org/carter.html (1993) by Andy Carvin.

Variant: There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.