Igor Stravinsky Quotes

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Thinking, Scotch, Names

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• Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Art, Opposites, Chaos

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music, Thinking, Bars

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• 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.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Meaningful, Freedom, Self

  Igor Stravinsky (1970). “Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons”, p.65, Harvard University Press

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music, Art, Creativity

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Love, Marriage, Order

  Igor Stravinsky “An Autobiography”, Library of Alexandria

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• There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Pulse, Beats, Rhythm

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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.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Christian, Distance, Church

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• A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music, Jazz And Life, Doe

  In Peter Yates Twentieth Century Music (1967) pt. 1, ch. 8. Cf. T. S. Eliot 76:8, Lionel Trilling 218:1

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• 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

  Church, Ornaments, Able

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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.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Inspirational, Life, Wisdom

  Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft (1966). “Themes and episodes”

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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.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Vocabulary, Light, Perfect

  Igor Stravinsky (1970). “Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons”, p.34, Harvard University Press

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• 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

  Pride, Artistic, Talent

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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.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music, Men, Order

  Igor Stravinsky “An Autobiography”, Library of Alexandria

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• Composition is selective improvisation.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Improvisation, Composition, Selective

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• Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Tunes, Tuning, Harps

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• Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Funny, Music, Witty

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Order, Flow, Structure

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Musical, Pieces, Villa

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• 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

  Music, Appreciation, Humorous

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• My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Childhood, Waiting, Hell

  Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft (1981). “Memories and Commentaries”, p.26, Univ of California Press

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• Music is...the coordination between man and time.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Men, Coordination, Music Is

  Igor Stravinsky (1958). “An autobiography”

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• I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Religious, Exercise, Years

  Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft (1981). “Expositions and Developments”, p.75, Univ of California Press

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• Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Inspiring, Art, Architecture

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music, Ducks, Effort

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