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The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

Aaron Copland

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
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
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
If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles.
AARON COPLAND

Know Music Play Sixties The Beatles Want
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 a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.
AARON COPLAND

Literary Men Together Two Word Wrong
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
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
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
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
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
Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
AARON COPLAND

Assuming Enough Love Music Surprise Tend
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
I don’t compose. I assemble materials.
AARON COPLAND

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

Abhor Adore Extravagance Waste

The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

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The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

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