Igor Stravinsky Quotes
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor.
(1882 – 1971)
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A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
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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.
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Childhood - a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.
[Children]
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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.
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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.
[Fashion]
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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.
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Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.
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I am an inventor of music.
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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.
[The Present]
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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.
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I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
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I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the varieties of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.
[Music]
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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.
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In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?
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Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?
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Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
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Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
[Art]
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Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.
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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.
[Music]
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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.
[Music]
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