I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.
AARON COPLANDI adore extravagance but I abhor waste.
AARON COPLANDSo long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.
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 COPLANDIf a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.
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 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 COPLANDYou 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 COPLANDIf you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles.
AARON COPLANDTo stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
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 COPLANDI 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.
AARON COPLANDWhen 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 COPLANDComposers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
AARON COPLANDA melody is not merely something you can hum.
AARON COPLANDSomeone once asked me… whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: “Every day!”
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 COPLAND