Igor Stravinsky Quotes
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.
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.
It's one of nature's way that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.
Look for the music on all things, and life will be a symphony of joy. My music is best understood by children and animals.
Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.
I wonder if memory is true, and I know that it cannot be, but that one lives by memory nevertheless and not by truth.
I never understood the need for a "live" audience. My music, because of its extreme quietude, would be happiest with a dead one.
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.
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.
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.
What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.
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.
The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.
A double bed can seem awfully small if your'e sharing it with someone you don't love." -Misia
A double bed can seem awfully small if your'e sharing it with someone you don't love." -Misia ― Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
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 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.
Childhood - a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.
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.
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.
Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor we do not remember him in it.
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.
