Aaron Copland

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

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

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.

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.

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.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.

Three months. I was playing the organ for three months. It was a challenge for me in the beginning.

Joe’s been my drummer for 14 years, and we’ve been buddies for six years.

The audience, they’re not professionals. They just love music. It isn’t necessary to play over their heads to be admired.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

It’s not uncomfortable for me to be a sideman, but I feel more comfortable as a bandleader.

You can’t rehearse a blues darlin’.

I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.

The thing I always default to is that I’ll always be here to write songs.

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn’t be able to do that.

It’s not what they think, it’s about what’s best for the music.

Darlin… be-bop is the music of the future.

You never master the instrument. You always just strive to get better.

Hot can be cool and cool can be hot and each can be both. But hot or cool man, Jazz is Jazz.