Musical Ideas Quotes by Igor Stravinsky

Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa Lobos?

— Igor Stravinsky

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to…

— Igor Stravinsky

I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who…

— Igor Stravinsky

We can neither put back the clock nor slow down our forward speed, and as we are already flying pilotless, on instrument controls, it…

— Igor Stravinsky

It is the transcendent (or 'abstract' or 'self-contained') nature of music that the new so called concretism--Pop Art, eighteen-hour slices-of-reality films, musique concrete--opposes. But…

— Igor Stravinsky

Composition is frozen improvisation.

— Igor Stravinsky

Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.

— Igor Stravinsky

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

— Igor Stravinsky

Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.

— Igor Stravinsky

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…

— 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

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

— Igor Stravinsky

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.

— Igor Stravinsky

My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.

— Igor Stravinsky

Look for the music on all things, and life will be a symphony of joy. My music is best understood by children and animals.

— Igor Stravinsky