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 past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things.
I haven't understood a single word of what you've said, but I've felt it.
Memory is the diarist of the mind; but the mind is the historian of the soul.
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
The European who has lost his identity is lost.
I am not a pianist, but a composer who writes for the piano.
Harpists spend so much time tuning their harps that they have nothing left to play.
The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation's life.
One has a nose. The nose develops an interest in harmonies.
I know what I want, and I know how to get it.
The trouble with music is that it is a series of repetitions.
Artists are like children: they need discipline to be free.
My music must be intellectual, that's to say, it must be constructive.
Time is the great healer, but it also wounds.
I consider music the universal language.
The secret of success is constancy to purpose.
Inspiring as the prospect of a new work is, the actual writing is drudgery.
I have learned to hate the word 'original'.
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place.
One must be a madman to compose.
Contemporaries of Igor Stravinsky
Other Musics born within 50 years of Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971).