Igor Stravinsky Quotes

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

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

A double bed can seem awfully small if your'e sharing it with someone you don't love. (Misia)

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

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

Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.

One lives by memory . . . and not by truth.

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

You're not exactly the father I'd choose for my children. (Coco Chanel)

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.

To continue in one path is to go backward.

my childhood was a peroid of waiting to the moment when i could send everyone in it to hell.

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.

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

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

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

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

There is no beauty in Music itself, the beauty is within the listener

A lot of habitually creative people have preparation rituals linked to the setting in which they choose to start their day. By putting themselves into that environment, they start their creative day. The composer Igor Stravinsky did the same thing every morning when he entered his studio to work: He sat at the piano and played a Bach fugue. Perhaps he needed the ritual to feel like a musician, or the playing somehow connected him to musical notes, his vocabulary. Perhaps he was honoring his hero, Bach, and seeking his blessing for the day. Perhaps it was nothing more than a simple method to get his fingers moving, his motor running, his mind thinking music. But repeating the routine each day in the studio induced some click that got him started. In the end, there is no ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down. It should make you want to be there, and once you find it, stick with it. To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that's habit-forming. All preferred working states, no matter how eccentric, have one thing in common: When you enter into them, they compel you to get started.

I live neither in the past nor in the future. 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.

Recordings of Georgian folk polyphonic songs makes a great musical impression. They are recorded in a tradition of active reproduction of Georgian folk music the origin of which begins from ancient time. It is a wonderful finding and can give to the performance much more than all the modem music can... Yodel or "Krimanchuli" as it is called in Georgia is the best song which I have ever heard. ["America" magazine, No 23 1967]

A double bed can seem awfully small if your'e sharing it with someone you don't love." -Misia ― Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Modern, Historical and Fictional Examples: Helena Blavatsky, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Anandamayi Ma, Kahlil Gibran, Herman Melville, Paul Gaugin, Whoopie Goldberg, Alice Walker, Mattie Stepanek, Igor Stravinsky, Meryl Streep

My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned to myself for each one of my undertakings. I shall go even further: 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 oneself of the claims that shackle the spirit.” — Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music

I have no use for a theoretic freedom. Let me have something finite, definite — matter that can lend itself to my operation only insofar as it is commensurate with my possibilities. And such matter presents itself to me together with limitations. I must in turn impose mine upon it. So here we are, whether we like it or not, in the realm of necessity. And yet which of us has ever heard talk of art as other than a realm of freedom? This sort of heresy is uniformly widespread because it is imagined that art is outside the bounds of ordinary activity. Well, in art as in everything else, one can build only upon a resisting foundation: whatever constantly gives way to pressure, constantly renders movement impossible. My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings. I shall go even further: 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.

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.

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.

For I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existence. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention – in short, an aspect which, unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being.

I love ballet and am more interested in it than in anything else. . . . For the only form of scenic art that sets itself, as its cornerstone, the tasks of beauty, and nothing else, is ballet.

The phenomenon of music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the co-ordination between man [sic] and time." Igor Stravinsky, quoted in DeLone et. al. (Eds.) (1975). Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0130493465, Ch. 3. from Igor Stravinsky' Autobiography (1962). New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., p. 54.

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

The more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free.

Cuando Igor Stravinsky yacía en su lecho de muerte, golpeaba repetidamente su anillo contra el metal de la barandilla de su cama de hospital y, cada vez que lo hacía, alarmaba a su mujer con el sonido. Al final, un poco molesta, le preguntó por qué lo hacía si sabía que ella seguía allí. "Pero quiero estar seguro de que yo todavía sigo aquí", contestó. Es posible que la repetición y el consuelo de atravesar terreno sólido y conocido sea nuestra forma de golpear la barandilla.

The choice today is revolt. Igor Stravinsky wrote, “The old original sin was one of knowledge, the new original sin is one of non-acknowledgment.” It is the refusal to acknowledge anything outside the operation of the human will—most especially the good toward which the soul is ordered. The good is what must ultimately inform human justice. Therefore, moral relativism is inimical to justice, as it removes the epistemological ground for knowing the good. As Max Planck, the founder of quantum theory, wrote, “Everything that is relative presupposes the existence of something that is absolute, and is meaningful only when juxtaposed to something absolute.”4 What happens if the absolute is absent? If what is good is relative to something other than itself, then it is not the good but the expression of some other interest that only claims to be the good. Claims of “good” then become transparent masks for self-interest. This is the surest path back to barbarism and the brutal doctrine of “right is the rule of the stronger”. The regression is not accidental. Relativism inevitably concludes in nihilism, and the ultimate expression of nihilism is the supremacy of the will.

A double bed can seem awfully small if your'e sharing it with someone you don't love." -Misia

Shostakovich read in a shaky voice before breaking off a short way through, leaving a “suave radio baritone” to finish his speech, and decided to expose the sham. Jumping to his feet, Nabokov loudly asked if the composer supported the recent Soviet vilification of his great compatriot Igor Stravinsky. Shostakovich worshipped Stravinsky as a composer, if not always as a man, but he was forced to parrot the official line. To Nabokov, this was proof enough that Shostakovich was “not a free man, but an obedient tool of his government.

My music is best undrstood by children and animals.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

The composer Igor Stravinsky wisely said, "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."3

Why is it, he thinks, that women find gray hair attractive? Perhaps it reminds them of death, and they find that exciting. Maybe they find it appealing to consider the perishability of their men.

Those times have given way to a new age that seeks to reduce everything to uniformity in the realm of matter while it tends to shatter all universality in the realm of the spirit in deference to an anarchic individualism.

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

There was nothing fake about Lisa. The more I thought about my made-up name, the phonier it felt to me. I wasn’t Romeo. I wasn’t Blue. I wasn’t some fabricated wannabe. I was a musician dead set on being real. It suddenly became clear that my pseudonym was getting in the way of that. It was the immature me looking to be cool. But coolness comes from within. You can’t fake it. You can’t name it into being. You have to grow it organically. I had a lot invested in Romeo Blue. I thought of him as an alter ego, without any of the problems facing Lennie. When I first came up with this new identity, it gave me confidence. But now it felt false. Romeo Blue was out. But what name was in? At first, I thought I’d go to the other extreme and call myself Leonard Kravitzky (my grandfather’s real last name before he hit Ellis Island); I actually ordered business cards carrying that name. Looking at them, though, I felt it was just too classical, like “Igor Stravinsky.” No, the easiest answer was the simplest: the real me, the real name. The only change was in the spelling: “Lennie” became “Lenny” because, on paper, I liked the shape of the y more than the ie. It looked stronger. I was Lenny Kravitz. Despite the name I’d invented and the image I’d adopted, I’d always been Lenny Kravitz. But it took Lisa to inspire me to find myself.

The conductor Bruno Walter comes by with some frequency. So do violinists Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz. Pianists Artur Schnabel and Moriz Rosenthal. Composers Ernest Bloch, Igor Stravinsky, Amy Beach, Mary Howe, Raimund Mandl, Ottorino Respighi and Ruth Crawford are among the names I can make out. Possibly even Charles Ives. Later, in a 1928 engagement calendar, if I am not misreading, I spot Maurice Ravel.

20世紀初，當科學家必須面對諸如電子和原子等無法親眼見到的物體時，這些問題變得至關重要。傳統觀察世界的方式似乎有所不足，智性的浪潮──先鋒派，橫掃整個歐洲。 　　科學概念、思維和認識的方式都被重新審視。1905年，愛因斯坦發現狹義相對論時就是這麼做。這種思維上的劇變也滲透到科學以外的世界。1907年，畢加索以他的畫作《亞維農的少女》（Les Demoiselles d'Avignon）宣告立體主義的到來；1910年，瓦西里．康定斯基揭開了抽象表現主義的面紗。1913年，伊戈爾．斯特拉文斯基（Igor Stravinsky）以作品《春之祭》（Rite of Spring）打破古典芭蕾的所有傳統。戰後的1920年代催生了阿諾．荀白克（Arnold Schönberg）的十二音技法、包豪斯建築和詹姆斯．喬伊斯非凡的小說，其中包含從相對論到立體主義的所有一切。與此同時，弗洛伊德和榮格正在探索無意識。

WOW!” A GALVANIZED Igor Stravinsky reportedly exclaimed after listening to Leonard Bernstein’s astonishing recording of The Rite of Spring—a still-unsurpassed performance that Columbia Records captured more than fifty years ago in a single inspired and electrically charged recording session on January 20, 1958, in New York City.

In his excellent book on classical music practice, The Perfect Wrong Note, pianist and teacher William Westney describes the need for privacy like this: The reason so many of us lose our bearings about practising early in life is that we practice in living rooms with other family members in earshot—and healthy practice would simply sound too obnoxious, intrusive, repetitious and unmusical for others to hear without annoyance.[1] There are two kinds of privacy that a practice room of your own will give you: one is inward, and the other is outward. The inward privacy is the knowledge that nobody can hear you, allowing you the freedom to experiment with any sound you want without fear of being judged. But it’s the long hours and the repetition that gets to others. In a private space, you can repeat something over and over and over again without fear of annoying anybody. Don’t assume the need for practice privacy will go away the better you get. Consider what the great composer Igor Stravinsky wrote in his autobiography: My family and I were quartered in a hotel in which it was impossible for me to compose. I was anxious, therefore, to find a piano some place where I could work in peace. I have never been able to compose unless sure that no one could hear me. A music dealer...provided me with a sort of lumber room full of empty Chocolat Suchard packing cases, which opened on to a chicken run.[2] That practice room wasn’t quite what Stravinsky was looking for, and he soon found another that suited him. Keep looking for a practice space that works for you.

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.

Igor Stravinsky said that “the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself.” I’d come across the quote years before, but I only now got it. When water is confined in a narrow space like a tube or a ravine, it will rush forward with power; when it has infinite room to expand, it becomes a puddle. The same thing happens with our creative

Igor Stravinsky said that “the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself.” I’d come across the quote years before, but I only now got it. When water is confined in a narrow space like a tube or a ravine, it will rush forward with power; when it has infinite room to expand, it becomes a puddle. The same thing happens with our creative juices. If I had had perfect control over my