Stravinsky's Quotes

What force is more potent than love? — Igor Stravinsky

The faculty of creating is never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the gift of observation. — Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise. — Dmitri Shostakovich

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

Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present. — Igor Stravinsky

Silence, which will save from shame, will also deprive me of fame. — Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

Good composers don't borrow, they steal — Igor Stravinsky

Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven. — Igor Stravinsky

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators. — Igor Stravinsky

The more controlled, limited and tormented art is, the freer it is. — Igor Stravinsky

My music is best understood by children and animals. — Igor Stravinsky

Even Stravinsky does not evoke the same public affection as Verdi. — Charles Rosen

Vivaldi didn't write 400 concertos; he wrote one concerto 400 times. — Igor Stravinsky

It's one of nature's way that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us. — Igor Stravinsky

He was a six and a half foot scowl.
(on Rachmaninov) — Igor Stravinsky

I am an inventor of music. — Igor Stravinsky

Composition is selective improvisation. — Igor Stravinsky

A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible. — Igor Stravinsky

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose. — Igor Stravinsky

Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself. — Igor Stravinsky

The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward. — Igor Stravinsky

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

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love? — Igor Stravinsky

I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one. — Igor Stravinsky

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

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also. — Igor Stravinsky

What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance. — Igor Stravinsky

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles. — Igor Stravinsky

To be deprived of art and left alone with philosophy is to be close to Hell. — Igor Stravinsky

That's the way Stravinsky was. Bup, bup, bup, bup. The poor guy's dead now. Play it legato. — Eugene Ormandy

We might as well swing boys, because Stravinsky cuts us all. — Woody Herman

The profound meaning of music's essential aim ... is to produce a communion, a union of man with his fellow man with the Supreme Being — Igor Stravinsky

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

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

Revolution means turning the wheel. — Igor Stravinsky

I had no idea Stravinsky disliked Debussy so much as this. — Ernest Newman

Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn. — Igor Stravinsky

I never am sea sick, never. I am sea drunk! — Igor Stravinsky

We cannot describe sound, but we cannot forget it either. — Igor Stravinsky

You can rave about Stravinsky without the slightest risk of being classified as a lunatic by the next generation . — George Bernard Shaw

I've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has to the book I am reading. — Igor Stravinsky

New music? Hell, there's been no new music since Stravinsky. — Duke Ellington

The first music I was exposed to was Stravinsky and I loved it but I don't remember it. — Leo Kottke

The true creator may be recognized by his ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note. — Igor Stravinsky

Georgian folk music has more new musical ideas than all the contemporary music.
[Los Angeles Times. 26.02.1990] — Igor Stravinsky

Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it. — Igor Stravinsky

Music must be listened to; it is not enough to hear it. A duck hears also. — Igor Stravinsky

My childhood was a peroid of waiting to the moment when i could send everyone in it to hell. — Igor Stravinsky

There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse. — Igor Stravinsky

Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right. — Igor Stravinsky

To continue in one path is to go backward. — Igor Stravinsky

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning. — Igor Stravinsky

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

The perfection of performance has escalated to the extent that the music itself is threatened with relegation. — Igor Stravinsky

Composition is frozen improvisation. — Igor Stravinsky

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

Stravinsky used Mother Goose. He was influenced by Mother Goose, indirectly, but very beautifully. — Gyorgy Ligeti

Hurry? I have no time to hurry. — Igor Stravinsky

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. — Igor Stravinsky

I never understood the need for a "live" audience. My music, because of its extreme quietude, would be happiest with a dead one. — Igor Stravinsky

Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos. — Igor Stravinsky

Nothing is likely about masterpieces, least of all whether there will be any. — Igor Stravinsky

A good composer does not imitate; he steals. — Igor Stravinsky

Art postulates communion, and the artist has an imperative need to make others share the joy which he experiences himself. — Igor Stravinsky

Music's exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it. — Igor Stravinsky

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being? — Igor Stravinsky

You may not be aware of this but Leonard Bernstein won another award, for explaining the music of Igor Stravinsky ... to Igor Stravinsky! — Victor Borge

The man has accumulated a repertoire of facial tics and blinks that demand nothing less than a complete musical score by Stravinsky. — Anonymous

I think of a sun like Beethoven, a wind like Debussy, and birdcalls like Stravinsky. But the tempo is all mine. — Patricia Highsmith

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it. — Igor Stravinsky

An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor. — Igor Stravinsky

My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey. — Igor Stravinsky

An artist is like a pig snouting truffles. — Igor Stravinsky

The one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music. — Igor Stravinsky

One lives by memory . . . and not by truth. — Igor Stravinsky

Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos? — Igor Stravinsky

We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it. — Igor Stravinsky

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end. — Igor Stravinsky

A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live. — Igor Stravinsky

I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one has received. — Igor Stravinsky