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

Igor Stravinsky

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

Commission Oneself Trick
Music is given to us specifically to make order of things, to move from an anarchic, individualistic state to a regulated, perfectly concious one, which alone insures vitality and durability.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Alone Consciousness Music Order Perfection Regulation State
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Greatness Potential Steal
I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Myself Prayer Reality Writing
The further one separates himself from the precepts of the Christian Church, the further one distances himself from the truth. Only God can create. I make music from music.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Creation Distance God Music Separate
Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Possible Right Save Silence Wrong
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
Music is the coordination between man and time.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Man Music Time
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
Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Burn Money Worth
A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Cultural Familiar Unknown
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
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
Composition is frozen improvisation.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

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

Essential Expression Music Nature
To continue in one path is to go backward.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Back Oneself Path
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Himself Imitation Reality
All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Definite Music Point Succession
Revolution means turning the wheel.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

One Liner Revolution
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Beginning Eat Inspiration Work
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Freedom Oneself Perspective Restriction
My music is best understood by children and animals.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Animal Best Children Music Understand
An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Abstraction Audience Person Taste
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
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 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

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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