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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

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 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 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
Composition is frozen improvisation.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Describe Improvisation One Liner
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
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 haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Feeling Life Music Myself Understand
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
Composers combine notes, that’s all.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Compose Note One Liner
What force is more potent than love?
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Force Love One Liner Strong
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
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

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

Goodness Himself Imitation 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
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
Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Art Chaos One Liner
Nothing is likely about masterpieces, least of all whether there will be any.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Master Music Song
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Beginning Eat Inspiration Work
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Himself Imitation Reality
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
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

End Music Pieces Song
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
To continue in one path is to go backward.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Back Oneself Path
To be deprived of art and left alone with philosophy is to be close to Hell.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Alone Art Close Hell Philosophy
Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Instrument Live Music Play Silence
I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Criticism Day Dreams Music Painting Small
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

I never understood the need for a “live” audience. My music, because of its extreme quietude, would be happiest with a dead one.

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I never understood the need for a “live” audience. My music, because of its extreme quietude, would be happiest with a dead one.

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