Words matter. These are the best Igor Stravinsky Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.
I was born out of due time in the sense that by temperament and talent I should have been more suited for the life of a small Bach, living in anonymity and composing regularly for an established service and for God.
The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.
Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don’t like, it’s always by Villa-Lobos?
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?
Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.
Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.
Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.
I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.
Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.
Conductors’ careers are made for the most part with ‘Romantic’ music. ‘Classic’ music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.
The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church’s greatest ornament.
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
What force is more potent than love?
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.