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 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!
More Aaron Copland Quotes
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The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.
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The melody is generally what the piece is all about.
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If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles.
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A melody is not merely something you can hum.
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Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
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I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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Someone once asked me… whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: “Every day!”
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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 -
Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
AARON COPLAND