Igor Stravinsky Quotes

• 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

• 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

• 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

• I am an inventor of music.

  Igor Stravinsky

• Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

  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

• A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

  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

• I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who was asked to comment on a certain abstract painting, and answered in hte negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monk.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Topics in Age, Funny

Igor Stravinsky (30)

Birth:	17th June, 1882
Death:	6th April, 1971
Nationality:	Russian
Profession:	Composer

About

Igor Stravinsky is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century. Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring.

Related Authors

• Hubert Parry
• Meg White
• Charles Parker Jr.
• Tommy Smothers
• Eric Idle
• Tomas Luis de Victoria
• Giorgio Moroder
• David Tudor
• Dave Holland
• Charlie Chaplin

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 26th December

Births

• 1820 - Dion Boucicault
• 1927 - Alan King
• 1956 - David Sedaris
• 1936 - Kitty Dukakis

Deaths

• 1945 - Bela Bartok
• 2005 - Vincent Schiavelli
• 2005 - Kerry Packer
• 1930 - Kin Hubbard
• 1931 - Melvil Dewey