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?

— Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland Quotes

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

— Aaron Copland

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

— Aaron Copland

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

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

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

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

— Aaron Copland

I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.

— Aaron Copland

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

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

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

— Aaron Copland

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

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

Reading

The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

— Aaron Copland

I don’t compose. I assemble materials.

— Aaron Copland

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

— Aaron Copland

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!

— Aaron Copland

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

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

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

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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