Quote

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

Aaron Copland

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Refinement
Spontaneity
Expressing
Flows
Rightness
Flow
Tapped
Source
Breathtaking
Music
Mozart

More quotes by Aaron Copland

Image
Someone once asked me... whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: Every day!
Aaron Copland
Image
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
Image
The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.
Aaron Copland
Image
The melody is generally what the piece is all about.
Aaron Copland
Image
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
Image
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.
Aaron Copland
Image
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
Image
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
Image
To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
Aaron Copland
Image
A melody is not merely something you can hum.
Aaron Copland
Image
If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles.
Aaron Copland
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.
Aaron Copland
Image
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.
Aaron Copland
Image
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.
Aaron Copland
Image
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.
Aaron Copland
Image
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
Image
I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.
Aaron Copland
Image
If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.
Aaron Copland