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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

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 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
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
Someone once asked me… whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: “Every day!”
AARON COPLAND

Answer Everyday Inspiration Life Once Positive
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
I don’t compose. I assemble materials.
AARON COPLAND

Assemble Compose Material
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
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
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
I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.
AARON COPLAND

Abhor Adore Extravagance Waste
Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.
AARON COPLAND

Art Inspirational Perhaps Self Subconscious Super
The melody is generally what the piece is all about.
AARON COPLAND

Generally Melody Piece
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
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
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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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