What to Listen for in Music Quotes

“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, What to Listen for in Music

“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, What to Listen For in Music

“but I have always suspected that one could substitute the Minuet of Haydn’s 98th symphony for the Minuet in Haydn’s 99th symphony without sensing a serious lack of coherence in either work.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen For in Music

“As a matter of fact, no one is more tiresome than the person who can understand only realism in art. It shows a rather low artistic mentality never to believe anything you see unless it appears to be real. One must be willing to allow that symbolic things also mirror realities and sometimes provide greater esthetic pleasure than the merely realistic.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen For in Music

“Speaking generally, there are two kinds of descriptive music. The first comes under the heading of literal description. A composer wishes to recreate the sound of bells in the night. He therefore writes certain chords, for orchestra or piano or whatever medium he is using, which actually sound like bells in the night. Something real is being imitated realistically. A famous example of that kind of description in music is the passage in one of Strauss’s tone poems where he imitates the bleating of sheep. The music has no other raison d’être than mere imitation at that point. The other type of descriptive music is less literal and more poetic. No attempt is made to describe a particular scene or event; nevertheless some outward circumstance arouses certain emotions in the composer which he wishes to communicate to the listener. It may be clouds or the sea or a country fair or an airplane. But the point is that instead of literal imitation, one gets a musicopoetic transcription of the phenomenon as reflected in the composer’s mind. That constitutes a higher form of program music. The bleating of sheep will always sound like the bleating of sheep, but a cloud portrayed in music allows the imagination more freedom. One principle must be kept firmly”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen For in Music

“Every symphony, for example, is a sonata for orchestra; every string quartet is a sonata for four strings; every concerto a sonata for a solo instrument and orchestra.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen For in Music

“If the theme itself, in its original form, is long enough and complete enough, the composer may have difficulty in seeing it in any other way. It already exists in its definitive form. That is why great music can be written on themes that in themselves are insignificant. One might very well say that the less complete, the less important, the theme, the more likely it is to be open to new connotations. Some of Bach’s greatest organ fugues are constructed on themes that are comparatively uninteresting in themselves.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen For in Music

“Why a good melody should have the power to move us has thus far defied all analysis.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen for in Music

“Music must always flow, for that is part of its very essence, but the creation of that continuity and flow--that long line-- constitutes the be-all and end-all of every composer's existence.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen for in Music

“As a matter of fact, the experience of most composers has been that the more complete a theme is the less possibility there is of seeing it in various aspects. If the theme itself, in its original form, is long enough and complete enough, the composer may have difficulty in seeing it in any other way. It already exists in its definitive form. That is why great music can be written on themes that in themselves are insignificant.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen for in Music

“The important thing is that each one feel for himself the specific expressive quality of a theme or, similarly, an entire piece of music. And if it is a great work of art, don't expect it to mean exactly the same thing to you each time you return to it.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen for in Music

“Music expresses, at different moments, serenity or exuberance, regret or triumph, fury or delight. It expresses each of these moods, and many others, in a numberless variety of subtle shadings and differences. It may even express a state of meaning for which there exists no adequate word in any language. In that case, musicians often like to say that it has only a purely musical meaning. They sometimes go farther and say that all music has only a purely musical meaning. What they really mean is that no appropriate word can be found to express the music's meaning and that, even if it could, they do not feel the need of finding it.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen for in Music

“They 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 used as a soporific. Contemporary music, especially, is created to wake you up, not put you to sleep. It is meant to stir and excite you, to move you—it may even exhaust you.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen For in Music

“The general tendency, in explaining form in music, has been to oversimplify. The usual method is to seize upon certain well-known formal molds and demonstrate how composers write works within these molds, to a greater or lesser extent. Close examination of most masterworks, however, will show that they seldom fit so neatly as they are supposed to into the exteriorized forms of the textbooks. The conclusion is inescapable that it is insufficient to assume that structure in music is simply a matter of choosing a formal mold and then filling it with inspired tones. Rightly understood, form can only be the gradual growth of a living organism from whatever premise the composer starts. It follows, then, that “the form of every genuine piece of music is unique.” It is musical content that determines form.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen For in Music

“Why is it that the musical public is seemingly so reluctant to consider a musical composition as, possibly, a challenging experience? When I hear a new piece of music that I do not understand I am intrigued - I want to make contact with it again at the first opportunity. It's a challenge - it keeps my interest in the art of music thoroughly alive. If, after repeated hearings, a work says nothing to me, I do not therefore conclude that modern composition is in a sorry condition. I simply conclude that that piece is not for me.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen for in Music

“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.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen For in Music

“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.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen For in Music

“Whatever comes under the heading of fugal form partakes in some way of the nature of a fugue. You already know, I feel sure, that in texture all fugues are polyphonic or contrapuntal (the terms are identical in meaning). Therefore, it follows that all fugal forms are polyphonic or contrapuntal in texture.”
― Aaron Copland, What to Listen For in Music