Igor Stravinsky
Overview
 
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (Russian: Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский, transliterated: Igorʹ Fëdorovič Stravinskij; ˌiɡərʲ ˌfʲjodɐrɐvʲɪtɕ strɐˈvʲinskʲɪj); 6 April 1971) was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor.

He is widely acknowledged as one of the most important and influential composers of 20th century music.
Quotations

"The phenomenon of music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the co-ordination between man [sic] and time."

Quoted in DeLone et. al. (Eds.) (1975). Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0130493465, Ch. 3. from Igor Stravinsky' Autobiography (1962). New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., p. 54.

Music's exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.

Quoted by Géza Szamosi, The Twin Dimensions: Inventing Time and Space (New York, 1986), p. 232

"One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles."

1962, quoted in Andriessen and Schoenberger, The Apollonian Clockwork (1989). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"My music is best understood by children and animals."

Igor Stravinsky. The Observer, Oct 8, 1961

"It is the transcendent (or 'abstract' or 'self-contained') nature of music that the new so called concretism--Pop Art, eighteen-hour slices-of-reality films, musique concrete--opposes. But instead of bringing art and reality closer together, the new movement merely thins out the distinction."

Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft (1982). Themes and Conclusions, p.188. Berkley: University of California Press.

"What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance."

Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft (1982). Themes and Conclusions, p.33. Berkley: University of California Press.

"Much of the music is a Merzbild, put together from whatever came to hand. I mean, for example...the Alberti-bass horn solo accompanying the Messenger. I also mean the fusion of such widely divergent types of music as the Folies Bergeres tune at No. 40 ('The girls enter, kicking') and the Wagnerian 7th-chords at Nos. 58 and 74."

Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft (1982). Dialogues, p.27.

"Composers combine notes, that's all."

Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft (1982). Dialogues, p.52.

 
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