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Music’s exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.

Igor Stravinsky

An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Abstraction Audience Person Taste
I never am sea sick, never. I am sea drunk!
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Myself Sea Sick
Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Essential Expression Music Nature
What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Chance Control Depression Element Fluctuation
Doomed to total failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference, he inexorably kept on cutting out his diamonds, his dazzling diamonds, of whose mines he had a perfect knowledge.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Diamond Failure Knowledge Perfection World
The further one separates himself from the precepts of the Christian Church, the further one distances himself from the truth. Only God can create. I make music from music.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Creation Distance God Music Separate
I am an inventor of music.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Invention Music Myself
The more controlled, limited and tormented art is, the freer it is.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Art Control Freedom Limitation
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Greatness Potential Steal
Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Man Music Present Realization
A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Cultural Familiar Unknown
Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Confusion Imagination Invention
Good composers don’t borrow, they steal.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Borrow One Liner Steal
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

Drama Live Music Reading Relationship
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Beginning Eat Inspiration Work
I never understood the need for a “live” audience. My music, because of its extreme quietude, would be happiest with a dead one.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Audience Death Live Music Need Performance Understand

Music’s exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.

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Music’s exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.

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