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Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

Aaron Copland

Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
AARON COPLAND

Born Complex Inherently Musical Simple
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!
AARON COPLAND

Depress Depressing Express Feel Moving People
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.
AARON COPLAND

Comment Country Creativity Figure Music
I don’t compose. I assemble materials.
AARON COPLAND

Assemble Compose Material
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.
AARON COPLAND

Gift Listener Listening Music Primarily Thinking
Someone once asked me… whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: “Every day!”
AARON COPLAND

Answer Everyday Inspiration Life Once Positive
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 COPLAND

Audience Happy Satisfied Useless
I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.
AARON COPLAND

Abhor Adore Extravagance Waste
Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
AARON COPLAND

Assuming Enough Love Music Surprise Tend
If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.
AARON COPLAND

Literary Men Together Two Word Wrong
To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
AARON COPLAND

Flow Inconceivable Incredible Music Stop Time
Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.
AARON COPLAND

Cow Fifth Listening Ralph Vaughan Symphony Time
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.
AARON COPLAND

Alive Compose Feeling Live Permanent Today
A melody is not merely something you can hum.
AARON COPLAND

Hum Melody Merely Something
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.
AARON COPLAND

Ask Compose Flaw Human Musician Name
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 COPLAND

Couch Music People Relax Stress Wisdom

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

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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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