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)
I cannot compose unless I know exactly what I am doing, and I cannot do that unless I have a plan.
The only love affair I have ever had was with music.
I have spent my life trying to learn the language of music.
The artist imposes a order upon reality.
The smell of the chestnut trees in the Jardin du Luxembourg is a part of my 'Sacre du Printemps'.
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.
I do not write modern music. I write good music.
The performer is the most literal of beings, and the interpreter is the most creative.
The worst thing is when people start to understand something. Then it's time to change.
I am not a revolutionary by nature. I was born into a world that was already revolutionary.
The public doesn't want new music; the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead.
I am not a man of the past, I am a man of the present.
Contemporaries of Igor Stravinsky
Other Musics born within 50 years of Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971).