To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
AARON COPLANDComposers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
More Aaron Copland Quotes
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Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.
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Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.
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If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.
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Arthur 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.
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Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
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Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.
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When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.
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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.
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The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.
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I don’t compose. I assemble materials.
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If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach.
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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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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.
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The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.
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The melody is generally what the piece is all about.
AARON COPLAND