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 the negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monkey. 'That's different. For a monkey, it's terrific'.

Igor Stravinsky

Categorized in : Negative Age Abstract Painting

Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos.

Igor Stravinsky

chaos opposites art

My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.

Igor Stravinsky

scotch names thinking

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. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.

Igor Stravinsky

freedom self meaningful

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

Igor Stravinsky

bars music thinking

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

Igor Stravinsky

creativity music art

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?

Igor Stravinsky

marriage love order

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Igor Stravinsky

jazz-and-life music doe

There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.

Igor Stravinsky

rhythm pulse beats

The further one separates himself from the precepts of the Christian Church, the further one distances himself from the truth. Only God can create. I make music from music.

Igor Stravinsky

distance church christian

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

ornaments able church

I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one has received.

Igor Stravinsky

artistic talent pride

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

wisdom inspirational life

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

music men order

Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into a harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word 'dissonance' has carried with it a certain odor of sinfulness. Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones that is not complete in itself and that must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance.

Igor Stravinsky

vocabulary light perfect

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

Igor Stravinsky

harps tuning tunes

Composition is selective improvisation.

Igor Stravinsky

selective composition improvisation

Music's exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.

Igor Stravinsky

structure flow order

My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.

Igor Stravinsky

childhood hell waiting

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.

Igor Stravinsky

inspiration work food

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.

Igor Stravinsky

effort ducks music