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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

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Goodness Himself Imitation Steal
The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

General Love Music Teaching Trouble
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

End Music Pieces Song
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
Good composers don’t borrow, they steal.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Borrow One Liner Steal
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
Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don’t like, it’s always by Villa Lobos?
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Music Myself Pieces
We cannot describe sound, but we cannot forget it either.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Forget Music Sound
I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Knowledge Learning Life Mistake Pursuit Wisdom
To be deprived of art and left alone with philosophy is to be close to Hell.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Alone Art Close Hell Philosophy
One’s belief that one is sincere is not so dangerous as one’s conviction that one is right. We all feel we are right; but we felt the same way twenty years ago and today we know we weren’t always right.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Belief Dangerous Oneself Right Sincere
Nothing is likely about masterpieces, least of all whether there will be any.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Master Music Song
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
The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Commission Oneself Trick
What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Chance Control Depression Element Fluctuation
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
Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Burn Money Worth
I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Myself Prayer Reality Writing
Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Drama Live Music Reading Relationship
Mediocrity borrows, genius steals.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Average Genius Steal
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
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Alone Essence Love Success
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
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Himself Imitation Reality
All you have to do is close your eyes and wait for the symbols.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Close Eyes Symbol Yourself
Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Confusion Imagination Invention
All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Definite Music Point Succession

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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