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The one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music.

Igor Stravinsky

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 God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Alcohol Drink Favorite God Myself
Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Man Music Present Realization
Good composers don’t borrow, they steal.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Borrow One Liner 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
Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Confusion Imagination Invention
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
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
To be deprived of art and left alone with philosophy is to be close to Hell.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Alone Art Close Hell Philosophy
Composers combine notes, that’s all.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Compose Note One Liner
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
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 is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Essential Expression Music Nature
All you have to do is close your eyes and wait for the symbols.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Close Eyes Symbol Yourself
Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Burn Money Worth
I am an inventor of music.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Invention Music Myself
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
In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Creation Force Love Order Reproduction
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Himself Imitation Reality
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 trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Commission Oneself Trick
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

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

Alone Essence Love Success
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Beginning Eat Inspiration Work
Mediocrity borrows, genius steals.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Average Genius Steal
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
The more controlled, limited and tormented art is, the freer it is.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Art Control Freedom Limitation

The one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music.

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The one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music.

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