Igor Stravinsky
Composer
1882-06-17
Quotes by Igor Stravinsky
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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 have no use for a theoretic freedom. Let me have something finite, definite — matter that can lend itself to my operation only insofar as it is commensurate with my possibilities. And such matter presents itself to me together with limitations. I must in turn impose mine upon it. So here we are, whether we like it or not, in the realm of necessity. And yet which of us has ever heard talk of art as other than a realm of freedom? This sort of heresy is uniformly widespread because it is imagined that art is outside the bounds of ordinary activity. Well, in art as in everything else, one can build only upon a resisting foundation: whatever constantly gives way to pressure, constantly renders movement impossible. My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings.I shall go even further: 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.
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I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
Read quote -
I have no use for a theoretic freedom. Let me have something finite, definite — matter that can lend itself to my operation only insofar as it is commensurate with my possibilities. And such matter presents itself to me together with limitations. I must in turn impose mine upon it. So here we are, whether we like it or not, in the realm of necessity. And yet which of us has ever heard talk of art as other than a realm of freedom? This sort of heresy is uniformly widespread because it is imagined that art is outside the bounds of ordinary activity. Well, in art as in everything else, one can build only upon a resisting foundation: whatever constantly gives way to pressure, constantly renders movement impossible. My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings.I shall go even further: 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.
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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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Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.
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Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
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A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
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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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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.
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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.
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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 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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Art postulates communion, and the artist has an imperative need to make others share the joy which he experiences himself.
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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.
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My music is best understood by children and animals.
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My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected to it to hell.
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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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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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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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