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Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.

Igor Stravinsky

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Exhaust Genius Human Myself Rhythm Willing
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
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Beginning Eat Inspiration Work
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
The true creator may be recognized by his ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Ability Creation Humble Note True Worth
Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Man Music Present Realization
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Himself Imitation Reality
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
Music is the coordination between man and time.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Man Music Time
I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Feeling Life Music Myself Understand
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
The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Commission Oneself Trick
The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

End Music Principle Reason Start
We can neither put back the clock nor slow down our forward speed, and as we are already flying pilotless, on instrument controls, it is even too late to ask where we are going.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Clock Control Fly Instrument Journey Slow Time
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
We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Creation Invention Music Name
Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Establishment Man Music Ourselves Purpose Time
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
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Difference Effort Listening
Composition is selective improvisation.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Improve One Liner Selective
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

Essential Man Meaning Unity
We cannot describe sound, but we cannot forget it either.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Forget Music Sound
I never am sea sick, never. I am sea drunk!
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Myself Sea Sick
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Alone Essence Love Success
Music must be listened to; it is not enough to hear it. A duck hears also.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Difference Enough Listening Music
It’s one of nature’s way that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Feeling Generation Nature Way

Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.

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Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.

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