Quotes by Igor Stravinsky - Page 2

A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Architect
House
Inspiration
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Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Work
Food
Appetite
Eating
Inspiration
Beginning
Brings
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Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Foolish
Possibility
Silence
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The faculty of creating is never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the gift of observation.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Creating
Given
Hands
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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 / Composer
Live By
Memories
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My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Childhood
Hell
Waiting
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Art postulates communion, and the artist has an imperative need to make others share the joy which he experiences himself.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Art
Joy
Needs
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It's one of nature's way that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Nature
Relationship
Grandma
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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 / Composer
Animal
Children
Symphony
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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 / Composer
Pardon
Should Have
Taste
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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 / Composer
Music Is
Needs
Would Be
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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
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Men
Inspiration
Profound
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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 / Composer
Attention
May
Perception
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Conformism is so hot on the heels of the mass-produced avant-garde that the 'ins' and the 'outs' change places with the speed of mach 3.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Avant Garde
Fashion
Hot
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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.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Inspirational
Music
Opportunity
Notes
Rhythm
Twelve
Variety
Exhaust
Opportunities
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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 / Composer
Music
Relationship
Book
Drama
Film
Living Room
Reading
Should
Living
Somebody
Same
Room
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Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Romantic
Careers
Classic
Conductor
Remember
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What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Chance
Elements
Fluctuation
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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 / Composer
Music
Men
Coordination
Including
Order
Purpose
Sole
Time Music Man
Establishing
Particularly
Sole Purpose
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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 has received.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Artistic
Pride
Talent
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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 / Composer
Appreciation
Music
Respect
Smile
Humorous
People
Should
Taught
Too Much
Trouble
Love Respect Music
Much
General
Too
Instead
To Love
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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 / Composer
Constraints
Execution
Precision
Self
More
Only
Constraint
Obtain
Serve
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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 / Composer
Becoming
Melody
Perpetual
Principles
Starting
Starting Over
Ending
Principle
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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 / Composer
Dream
Criticism
Rodents
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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 relegation.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Music
Challenges
Performances
Years
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The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Awareness
Composer
Conscious
Real
Thinking
Whole
Time Work Always
Aware
Work Time Will
Work Time Real
Later
Suddenly
Thinks
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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 / Composer
Age
Long
Pressure
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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 / Composer
Art
Criticism
Judging
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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 / Composer
Inspirational
Knowledge
Life
Wisdom
Composer
Exposure
Life Wisdom Knowledge
Life Wisdom My Life
Mistakes
Assumptions
Chiefly
False
Learned
Pursuits
Throughout
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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 / Composer
Christian
Church
Distance
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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 / Composer
Flying
Speed
Too Late
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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 / Composer
Cutting
Ignorance
Perfect
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I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Tomorrow
Truth Is
Truth Today Tomorrow
Forth
Present
Serve
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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 / Composer
Music
Moving
Order
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The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Able
Church
Decoration
Ornaments
Praise
Ornament
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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 felt the same way twenty years ago and today we know we weren't always right.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Today
Twenties
Years
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I was born out of due time in the sense that by temperament and talent I should have been more suited for the life of a small Bach, living in anonymity and composing regularly for an established service and for God.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Anonymity
Born
Composing
Should Have
Talent
Temperament
Life Time God
Bach
Established
Life God Time
Due
Regularly
Service
Suited
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A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Animal
Dare
Eminence
Plague
Royal
Royal Family
Die
Anymore
Cross
Street
Hardly
Member
Stared
Wherever
Zoo
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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 idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Zoos
Animal
Idiot
Royal
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I live neither in the past nor in the future. I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Music
Past
Today
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When I discovered that I had been made custodian of this gift, in my earliest childhood, I pledged myself to God to be worthy of it, but I have received uncovenanted mercies all my life. The custodian has too often kept faith on his all-too-worldly terms.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Childhood
Custodians
Mercy
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I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Exercise
Religious
Years
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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 instead of bringing art and reality closer together, the new movement merely thins out the distinction.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Art
Reality
Self
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My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Freedom
Meaningful
Self
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I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who was asked to comment on a certain abstract painting, and answered in the negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monkey. 'That's different. For a monkey, it's terrific'.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Age
Abstract Painting
Negative
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I was...attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing "simple" music, blamed for deserting "modernism," accused of renouncing my "true Russian heritage." People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried "sacrilege": "The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone." To them all my answer was and is the same: You "respect," but I love.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Artist
People
Simple
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We have a duty towards music; namely to invent it. ...Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it. For the act of invention implies the necessity of a lucky find and of achieving realization of this find. What we imagine does not necessarily take on concrete form and may remain in a state of virtuality; whereas invention is not conceivable apart from its actually being worked out.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Imagination
Confused
Doe
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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 void by making use of preconceived theories...Archaeology, then, does not supply us with certitudes, but rather with vague hypotheses. And in the shade of these hypotheses some artists are content to dream, considering them less as scientific facts than as sources of inspiration.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Dream
Artist
Inspiration
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Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into a harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word 'dissonance' has carried with it a certain odor of sinfulness. Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones that is not complete in itself and that must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance.
Igor Stravinsky / Composer
Light
Perfect
Vocabulary
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Igor Stravinsky Quotes - Page 2

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