Igor Stravinsky Quotes - Page 4

We cannot describe sound, but we cannot forget it either.

Old age is a time of humiliations, the most disagreeable of which, for me, is that I cannot work long at sustained high pressure with no leaks in concentration.

The past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things. The bond that united them eludes us. Our imagination usually fills in the void by making use of preconceived theories...Archaeology, then, does not supply us with certitudes, but rather with vague hypotheses. And in the shade of these hypotheses some artists are content to dream, considering them less as scientific facts than as sources of inspiration.

Composition is frozen improvisation.

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.

Music is given to us specifically to make order of things, to move from an anarchic, individualistic state to a regulated, perfectly concious one, which alone insures vitality and durability.

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

The performance of performance has developed to such an extent in recent years that it challenges the music itself and will soon threaten it with relegation.

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

An artist is like a pig snouting truffles.

I never am sea sick, never. I am sea drunk!

We can neither put back the clock nor slow down our forward speed, and as we are already flying pilotless, on instrument controls, it is even too late to ask where we are going.

We have a duty towards music; namely to invent it. ...Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it. For the act of invention implies the necessity of a lucky find and of achieving realization of this find. What we imagine does not necessarily take on concrete form and may remain in a state of virtuality; whereas invention is not conceivable apart from its actually being worked out.

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.

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

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

Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.

Good composers don't borrow, they steal

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

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

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