Igor Stravinsky Quotes, Sayings, Remarks, Thoughts and Speeches
Igor Stravinsky Quotes and Sayings
- 1
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 2
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.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 3
Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 4
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.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 5
Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 6
I am an inventor of music.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 7
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.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 8
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.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 9
I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 10
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.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 11
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.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 12
In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 13
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 14
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 15
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 16
Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 17
Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 18
My music is best understood by children and animals.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 19
Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 20
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.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 21
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.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 22
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.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 23
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.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 24
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.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 25
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 26
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 27
What force is more potent than love?
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 28
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
- 29
Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?
Igor Stravinsky | Refcard PDF ↑
