Igor Stravinsky Quotes

86 quotes in 952 categories

• Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.
• The one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music.
• Art postulates communion, and the artist has an imperative need to make others share the joy which he experiences himself.
• The past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things. The bond that united them eludes us. Our imagination usually fills in the…
• Music's exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.
• A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street any more without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an…
• An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.
• 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…
• Nothing is likely about masterpieces, least of all whether there will be any.
• The performance of performance has developed to such an extent in recent years that it challenges the music itself and will soon threaten it with…
• 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 we…
• The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one
• I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one…
• Composition is selective improvisation.
• The faculty of creating is never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the gift of observation.
• I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
• Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
• Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.
• 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.
• 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…

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