Igor Stravinsky
Rite of Spring revolutionized modern music
Most quoted
"What is important for the lucid ordering of the work—for its crystallization—is that all the Dionysian elements which set the imagination of the artist in motion and make the life-sap rise must be properly subjugated before they intoxicate us, and must finally be made to submit to the law: Apollo demands it."
— from Poetics of Music, 1939
"For I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude, a psychological state, a natural phenomenon, etc.... Expression has never been an inherent property of music and is certainly not the aim of its existence."
— from An Autobiography (Chroniques de ma vie), 1936
"The faculty of creating is never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the gift of observation. And the true creator may be recognized by his ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note."
— from Poetics of Music, 1939
All quotes by Igor Stravinsky (372)
The artist's greatest challenge is to remain true to himself.
I have always been drawn to the primal rhythms of nature.
I have always been a man of my time, and I have always tried to be a man of my time.
I am not a revolutionary. I am an inventor.
L'art est un mode de connaissance. (Art is a mode of knowledge.)
Music is powerless to express anything at all.
For myself, I have no use for the word 'inspiration.'
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself.
To listen is an effort, and a creative effort. The listener has to add his own part to the creation.
My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action.
I hold that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude, a psychological state, a natural phenomenon, etc.
The phenomenon of music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and precisely, the coordination between man and time.
I have never understood the word 'modern.'
I am for the music that is made, not for the music that is talked about.
The true creator is a man who is not afraid to be alone.
I am a classicist, but I am also a revolutionary.
The composer's duty is to invent, not to imitate.
I am a craftsman. I make things.
Music is a chronosophy, a philosophy of time.
The artist is a creator of forms.
Contemporaries of Igor Stravinsky
Other Musics born within 50 years of Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971).