We can neither put back the clock nor slow down our forward speed, and as we are already flying pilotless, on instrument controls, it is even too late to ask where we are going.
IGOR STRAVINSKYThe principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.
More Igor Stravinsky Quotes
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Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don’t like, it’s always by Villa Lobos?
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
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.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
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.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
The faculty of creating is never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the gift of observation.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
Old age is a time of humiliations, the most disagreeable of which, for me, is that I cannot work long at sustained high pressure with no leaks in concentration.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
All you have to do is close your eyes and wait for the symbols.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
Composition is frozen improvisation.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
Music must be listened to; it is not enough to hear it. A duck hears also.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
An artist is like a pig snouting truffles.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
Mediocrity borrows, genius steals.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
Music is given to us specifically to make order of things, to move from an anarchic, individualistic state to a regulated, perfectly concious one, which alone insures vitality and durability.
IGOR STRAVINSKY