The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.
AARON COPLANDArthur V. Berger commenting on the music of Aaron Copland: Here is at last an American that we may place unapologetically beside the great recognized creative figures of any other country.
More Aaron Copland Quotes
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I don’t compose. I assemble materials.
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The melody is generally what the piece is all about.
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To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
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If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.
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If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles.
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Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
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The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking “Is there a meaning to music?” My answer would be, “Yes”, And “Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?” My answer to that would be “No.”
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Someone once asked me… whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: “Every day!”
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You may feel depressed, but it can’t be so depressing that you can’t move. No, I would say that people create in moments when they are elated about expressing their depression!
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Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.
AARON COPLAND -
This whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, “Is there a meaning to music?” My answer to that would be, “Yes.” And “Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?” My answer to that would be, “No.”
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A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.
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You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.
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The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.
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So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.
AARON COPLAND






