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Composition is selective improvisation.

Igor Stravinsky

The performance has developed to such an extent in recent years that it challenges the music itself and will soon threaten it with relegation.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Challenge Development Performance Threat
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

Live Memories Myself True Wonder
Music’s exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Flow Music Order Structure Time
We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Creation Invention Music Name
I never am sea sick, never. I am sea drunk!
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Myself Sea Sick
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

Aware Conscious Himself Thinking Time Willing Work
Art postulates communion, and the artist has an imperative need to make others share the joy which he experiences himself.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Art Artist Experience Himself Joy Share Unity
I never understood the need for a “live” audience. My music, because of its extreme quietude, would be happiest with a dead one.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Audience Death Live Music Need Performance Understand
My music is best understood by children and animals.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Animal Best Children Music Understand
Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Essential Expression Music Nature
Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Art Chaos One Liner
The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Commission Oneself Trick
Mediocrity borrows, genius steals.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Average Genius Steal
Look for the music on all things, and life will be a symphony of joy. My music is best understood by children and animals.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Animal Children Life Music Myself Symphony Understand
There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Life Lyrics Music Nature
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Freedom Impose Oneself Precision Service
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

Age Concentration Humiliation Old Pressure Time Work
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Difference Effort Listening
Doomed to total failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference, he inexorably kept on cutting out his diamonds, his dazzling diamonds, of whose mines he had a perfect knowledge.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Diamond Failure Knowledge Perfection World
It is my conviction that the public always shows itself more honest in its spontaneity than do those who officially set themselves up as judges of works of art.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Always Art Honesty Judgement Public Work
We cannot describe sound, but we cannot forget it either.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Forget Music Sound
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Himself Imitation Reality
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

End Music Pieces Song
Nothing is likely about masterpieces, least of all whether there will be any.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Master Music Song
The more controlled, limited and tormented art is, the freer it is.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Art Control Freedom Limitation
The faculty of creating is never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the gift of observation.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Creation Gift Hands Observation Talent
One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Oneself Simplicity Truffle

Composition is selective improvisation.

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Composition is selective improvisation.

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