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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.

Aaron Copland

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
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
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.
AARON COPLAND

Flow Great Irresistibly Long Men Mississippi Symphony
The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.
AARON COPLAND

Great Human May Moment Spirit
The melody is generally what the piece is all about.
AARON COPLAND

Generally Melody Piece
Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
AARON COPLAND

Assuming Enough Love Music Surprise Tend
I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.
AARON COPLAND

Abhor Adore Extravagance Waste
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.
AARON COPLAND

Brutal Fact People Want Recording Work
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
A melody is not merely something you can hum.
AARON COPLAND

Hum Melody Merely Something
The 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 COPLAND

Art Ask Music Problem Quite State
Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.
AARON COPLAND

Breathtaking Express Flow Mozart Source Spontaneity Tap
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.
AARON COPLAND

Giving Human Long Music Spirit Thrives
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
If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles.
AARON COPLAND

Know Music Play Sixties The Beatles Want
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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