Quote

Most people use music as a couch they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.

Aaron Copland

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Aaron Copland
Age: 90 †
Born: 1900
Born: November 14
Died: 1990
Died: December 2
Choreographer
Composer
Conductor
Film Score Composer
Jazz Musician
Music Critic
Music Pedagogue
Musicologist
Pianist
Brooklyn
New York
Serious
Consoled
Wisdom
Couch
Living
Couches
Use
Relaxed
Music
Piano
Never
Stress
People
Daily
Meant
Soporific

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If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles.
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The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.
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Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
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Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.
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The melody is generally what the piece is all about.
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For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn't live with it--even of my own music--with the same nuances forever.
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You may feel depressed, but it can't be so depressing that you can't move. No, I would say that people create in moments when they are elated about expressing their depression!
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So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.
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There is something about music that keeps its distance even at the moment that it engulfs us. It is at the same time outside and away from us and inside and part of us. In one sense it dwarfs us, and in another we master it. We are led on and on, and yet in some strange way we never lose control.
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Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
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You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.
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Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.
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A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.
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I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.
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The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It's useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.
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I don't compose. I assemble materials.
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This whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, “Is there a meaning to music?” My answer to that would be, “Yes.” And “Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?” My answer to that would be, “No.”
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Arthur V. Berger commenting on the music of Aaron Copland: Here is at last an American that we may place unapologetically beside the great recognized creative figures of any other country.
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If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach.
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Someone once asked me... whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: Every day!
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