The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution. – Igor Stravinsky
Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune. – Igor Stravinsky
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. – Igor Stravinsky
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning. – Igor Stravinsky
Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading. – Igor Stravinsky
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. – Igor Stravinsky
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. – Igor Stravinsky
A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares. – Igor Stravinsky
Conductors’ careers are made for the most part with ‘Romantic’ music. ‘Classic’ music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it. – Igor Stravinsky
Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time. – Igor Stravinsky
The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending. – Igor Stravinsky
The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do. – Igor Stravinsky
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being? – Igor Stravinsky
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. – Igor Stravinsky
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. – Igor Stravinsky
In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love? – Igor Stravinsky