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Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

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

Aware Conscious Himself Thinking Time Willing Work
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
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
There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Life Lyrics Music Nature
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
My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Childhood Connection Hell Moments Myself Period
Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Essential Expression Music Nature
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
Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Confusion Imagination Invention
The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Commission Oneself Trick
Music is the coordination between man and time.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

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

Borrow One Liner Steal
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
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Greatness Potential Steal
A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Architect Build Himself Home Invention Live
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

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

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Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

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