I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.
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.
More Aaron Copland Quotes
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Someone once asked me… whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: “Every day!”
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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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A melody is not merely something you can hum.
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I hope my recordings of my own works won’t inhibit other people’s performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn’t always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.
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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!
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This 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.”
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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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Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
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To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
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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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The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.
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The melody is generally what the piece is all about.
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If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.
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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.
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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.
AARON COPLAND






