Igor Stravinsky Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Art, Opposites, Chaos

  50 Copy quote

• 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

  55 Copy quote

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music, Thinking, Bars

  64 Copy quote

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Thinking, Scotch, Names

  61 Copy quote

• 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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• 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

  43 Copy quote

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Ducks, Enough

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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

  "The Apollonian Clockwork". Book by Louis Andriessen, 1983.

  64 Copy quote

• 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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• 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

  37 Copy quote

• 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

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  "Media and Popular Music". Book by Peter Mills (p. 1997), May 16, 2012.

  21 Copy quote

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Funny, Music, Witty

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

  16 Copy quote

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Tunes, Tuning, Harps

  34 Copy quote

• 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

  28 Copy quote

• Vivaldi didn't write 400 concertos; he wrote one concerto 400 times.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Writing, Vivaldi

  12 Copy quote

• Hurry? I have no time to hurry.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Haste

  1 Copy quote

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music, Ducks, Effort

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

  23 Copy quote

• 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”

  80 Copy quote

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music Is, Powerless

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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

  41 Copy quote

• We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Duty

  Igor Stravinsky (1970). “Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons”, p.53, Harvard University Press

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• I was...attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing "simple" music, blamed for deserting "modernism," accused of renouncing my "true Russian heritage." People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried "sacrilege": "The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone." To them all my answer was and is the same: You "respect," but I love.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Simple, Artist, People

  "Expositions and Developments". Book by Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft, pp. 113-114, 1959.

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  50 Copy quote

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

  Igor Stravinsky

  Order, Flow, Structure

  "The Twin Dimensions: Inventing Time and Space". Book by Géza Szamosi, p. 232, 1986.

  34 Copy quote

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