28 quotes by Igor Stravinsky

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A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Music

3.4 · 41 votes

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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.

167 reads

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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.

Music

4.8 · 37 votes · 130 reads

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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.

Music

149 reads

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

4.0 · 53 votes · 163 reads

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Igor Stravinsky

Art and Culture
I am an inventor of music.
3.0 · 48 votes · 57 reads
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Time
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.
3.1 · 37 votes · 176 reads
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Art and Culture
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.
3.0 · 41 votes · 195 reads
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Art and Culture
I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
4.3 · 8 votes · 66 reads
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Art and Culture
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.
4.4 · 55 votes · 163 reads
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Art and Culture
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.
3.3 · 34 votes · 86 reads
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Feelings
In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?
5.0 · 51 votes · 64 reads
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Feelings
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?
5.0 · 22 votes · 111 reads
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Various
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
3.1 · 10 votes · 188 reads
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Art and Culture
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
3.9 · 54 votes · 105 reads
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Society
Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.
3.7 · 8 votes · 133 reads
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Art and Culture
Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.
3.5 · 62 votes · 76 reads
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Art and Culture
My music is best understood by children and animals.
3.4 · 43 votes · 30 reads
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Virtues
Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.
3.9 · 6 votes · 155 reads
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Art and Culture
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.
3.1 · 20 votes · 80 reads
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Art and Culture
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.
3.0 · 57 votes · 49 reads
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Art and Culture
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.
3.8 · 58 votes · 14 reads
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Art and Culture
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.
4.1 · 41 votes · 152 reads
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Feelings
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.
4.6 · 41 votes · 121 reads
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Art and Culture
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
4.4 · 31 votes · 46 reads
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Art and Culture
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
4.7 · 55 votes · 24 reads
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Art and Culture
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
3.7 · 11 votes · 180 reads
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Art and Culture
Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?
4.9 · 32 votes · 161 reads
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