Igor Stravinsky Quotes
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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.
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My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.
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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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Art postulates communion, and the artist has an imperative need to make others share the joy which he experiences himself.
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A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.
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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.
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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.
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Hurry? I have no time to hurry.
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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.
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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.
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I never am sea sick, never. I am sea drunk!
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The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.
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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.
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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.
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Revolution means turning the wheel.
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Composers combine notes, that's all.
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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.
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Music's exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.
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Good composers don't borrow, they steal
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We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.
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A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.
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One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.
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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.
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A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
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My music is best understood by children and animals.
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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.
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Composition is frozen improvisation.
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All you have to do is close your eyes and wait for the symbols.
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The more controlled, limited and tormented art is, the freer it is.
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To continue in one path is to go backward.
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