Aaron Copland Quotes

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!

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.

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.

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or
perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am
sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

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.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

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.

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.

Is there a meaning to music? Yes. Can you state in so many words what the meaning is? No.

The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

Someone once asked me ... whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: "Every day!"

If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles.

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'.

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

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

There were several reasons for the disrepute into which opera fell. Among the first of these was the fact that opera bore the "taint" of Wagner about it. For at least thirty years after his death, the entire musical world made heroic efforts to throw off the terrific impact of Wagner. That is no reflection on his music. It simply means that each new generation must create its own music; and it was a very difficult thing to do, particularly in the opera house, immediately after Wagner had lived.

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 ...

The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It's useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.

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

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.

The fearsome critic and not-very-tough composer Virgil Thomson once drew up a set of rules for hearing an unfamiliar work; the last of those is the question I take with me to every new-music event: "Is this just a good piece of clockwork, or does it actually tell time?

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn't.

The symphony had its origin not in instrumental forms like the concerto grosso, as one might have expected, but in the overture of early Italian opera. The overture, or sinfonia, as it was called, as perfected by Alessandro Scarlatti consisted of three parts: fast-slow-fast, thus presaging the three movements of the classical symphony.