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Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.

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
Musical
Worse
Simple
Born
Music
Better
Inherently
Complexes
Complex

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Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
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The melody is generally what the piece is all about.
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The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.
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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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The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking Is there a meaning to music? My answer 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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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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Someone once asked me... whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: Every day!
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I hope my recordings of my own works won't inhibit other people's performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn't always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.
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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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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 a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.
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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.
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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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Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.
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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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A melody is not merely something you can hum.
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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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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 be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room - proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.
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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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