Aaron Copland quotes

Aaron Copland was an influential American composer, conductor, and teacher, best known for shaping the sound of 20th-century American classical music. His works often drew inspiration from American folk traditions and landscapes. He became known as the "Dean of American Composers" for his profound impact on musical culture. Here are 17 of his quotes:

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

Aaron Copland

I don't compose. I assemble materials.

Aaron Copland

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

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.

Aaron Copland

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

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

Aaron Copland

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

Aaron Copland

I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.

Aaron Copland

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

Somehow, suddenly, a musical idea occurs to you; either a whole phrase, or three notes, or a series of chords, something that seems pregnant with possibilities for development. Once you have the kinds of ideas that fascinate you, you're no longer in a position to decide the nature of the animal. It's going to take its essence from the musical ideas that occur to you....Some musical ideas are too short, they don't seem long enough to carry you through ten minutes of music, so you have to start searching about for other ideas; contrasting ones that seem to fit with the original ones.

Aaron Copland

If the listener does eventually come to the point where he makes the ultimate performance by splicing tapes from other musicians' recordings, he will eventually become just as bored with it as with other recordings, for it will still always be the same. Look, for instance, at electronic music. The boys are already becoming bored with what they do because they put it irrevocably on tape. The best indication of this is that more and more they are mixing the live performance element with their tapes.

Aaron Copland

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

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

Aaron Copland

The composer who is frightened of losing his artistic integrity through contact with a mass audience is no longer aware of the meaning of the word art.

Aaron Copland

Nadia Boulanger was quite aware that as a composition teacher she labored under two further disadvantages: she was not herself a regularly practicing composer and in so far as she composed at all she must of necessity be listed in that unenviable category of the woman composer. Everyone knows that the high achievement of women musicians as vocalists and instrumentalists has no counterpart in the field of musical composition. This historically poor showing has puzzled more than one observer. ... Is it possible that there is a mysterious element in the nature of musical creativity that runs counter to the nature of the feminine mind? ... The future may very well have a different tale to tell; for the present, however, no woman's name will be found on the list of world-famous composers.

Aaron Copland