26 Quotes & Sayings By Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, near Saint Petersburg, into a family of musicians. He studied the piano under his father and continued his studies in Saint Petersburg with Nikolai Medtner. At the age of sixteen, Igor entered the Petrograd Conservatory, studying harmony with Sergei Taneyev. His compositional skills would eventually blossom under the tutelage of Alexander Glazunov, who encouraged him to study composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the Conservatory in Petrograd Read more

Igor's studies brought him fame among Russian composers for his minutely controlled writing ability and use of harmony and dissonance. As a composer, he became known for his Modernist approach to music, which included both traditional elements of folk music and more experimental techniques derived from atonality. The influence of Russian folk songs on his early work is also well-documented.

Themes from Russian folklore influenced his composing style, while Igor's harmonic language shows influences from Russian nationalist writers such as Alexander Pushkin, Fedor Dostoevsky, and Maxim Gorky. His first musical work dates from his student years at the conservatory; an opera about Tsar Nicholas II's wife Alexandra Feodorovna called The Maid of Orleans (Fragmente der Oper "Die Jungfrau von Orleans"). After graduation in 1905 he became a member of Dmitry Shostakovich's class at the Conservatory where he studied harmony with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

He also became an admirer of Wagner's music and began to use Wagnerian leitmotifs (or musical themes associated with characters or events) in some of his works (The Rite of Spring).

1
I have no use for a theoretic freedom. Let me have something finite, definite – matter that can lend itself to my operation only insofar as it is commensurate with my possibilities. And such matter presents itself to me together with limitations. I must in turn impose mine upon it. So here we are, whether we like it or not, in the realm of necessity. And yet which of us has ever heard talk of art as other than a realm of freedom? This sort of heresy is uniformly widespread because it is imagined that art is outside the bounds of ordinary activity. Well, in art as in everything else, one can build only upon a resisting foundation: whatever constantly gives way to pressure, constantly renders movement impossible. My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings. I shall go even further: 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
2
I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it. Igor Stravinsky
3
I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music. Igor Stravinsky
4
He was a six and a half foot scowl.(on Rachmaninov) Igor Stravinsky
5
One lives by memory .. . and not by truth. Igor Stravinsky
6
Old age is a time of humiliations the most disagreeable of which for me is that I cannot work long at sustained high pressure with no leaks in concentration. Igor Stravinsky
7
Childhood - a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell. Igor Stravinsky
8
Conformism is so hot on the heels of the mass-produced avant-garde that the 'ins' and the 'outs' change places with the speed of mach 3. Igor Stravinsky
9
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end. Igor Stravinsky
10
I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the varieties of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust. Igor Stravinsky
11
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. Igor Stravinsky
12
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. Igor Stravinsky
13
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
14
What force is more potent than love? Igor Stravinsky
15
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being? Igor Stravinsky
16
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
17
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
18
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
19
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
20
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
21
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
22
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
23
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal. Igor Stravinsky
24
Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven. Igor Stravinsky
25
Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn. Igor Stravinsky