Igor Stravinsky Quotes

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.

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

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.

We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.

Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.

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

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.

I am an inventor of music.

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.