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I don't compose. I assemble materials.

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
Assemble
Compose
Materials

More quotes by Aaron Copland

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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.
Aaron Copland
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The melody is generally what the piece is all about.
Aaron Copland
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Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.
Aaron Copland
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If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.
Aaron Copland
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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.
Aaron Copland
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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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Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
Aaron Copland
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To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
Aaron Copland
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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.
Aaron Copland
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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.
Aaron Copland
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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.
Aaron Copland
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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.”
Aaron Copland
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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.
Aaron Copland
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Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.
Aaron Copland
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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.
Aaron Copland
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The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.
Aaron Copland
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A melody is not merely something you can hum.
Aaron Copland
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Someone once asked me... whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: Every day!
Aaron Copland
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When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.
Aaron Copland
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Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.
Aaron Copland