Igor Stravinsky Music Quotations

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.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

The Church knew what the psalmist knew: 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.

Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

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

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.

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

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.

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.

Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.

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

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.

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.

Music is...the coordination between man and time.

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