A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
IGOR STRAVINSKYWhy is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don’t like, it’s always by Villa Lobos?
More Igor Stravinsky Quotes
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Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
I wonder if memory is true, and I know that it cannot be, but that one lives by memory nevertheless and not by truth.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
We cannot describe sound, but we cannot forget it either.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one has received.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
To be deprived of art and left alone with philosophy is to be close to Hell.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
The profound meaning of music’s essential aim, is to produce a communion, a union of man with his fellow man with the Supreme Being.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
Composition is frozen improvisation.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
Old age is a time of humiliations, the most disagreeable of which, for me, is that I cannot work long at sustained high pressure with no leaks in concentration.
IGOR STRAVINSKY -
Music is given to us specifically to make order of things, to move from an anarchic, individualistic state to a regulated, perfectly concious one, which alone insures vitality and durability.
IGOR STRAVINSKY