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.
AARON COPLANDMost 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.
AARON COPLANDThe main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.
AARON COPLANDSomeone once asked me… whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: “Every day!”
AARON COPLANDA melody is not merely something you can hum.
AARON COPLANDMusic that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
AARON COPLANDYou 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.
AARON COPLANDListening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.
AARON COPLANDThe melody is generally what the piece is all about.
AARON COPLANDIf one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach.
AARON COPLANDThe 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.”
AARON COPLANDThe greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.
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.
AARON COPLANDTo stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
AARON COPLANDA great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.
AARON COPLANDI don’t compose. I assemble materials.
AARON COPLANDThis 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.”
AARON COPLAND