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.

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

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

I would say that a composer writes music to express and communicate and put down in permanent form certain thoughts, emotions and states of being. The resultant work of art should speak to the men and women of the artist’s own time with a directness and immediacy of communicative power that no previous art expression can give.

Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world’s great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province… Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated.

It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.

There has always been a tension between Jazz as a commercial music and as an art form.

If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.

One shouldn’t be in the habit of quoting oneself.

I never believed in a set routine. It should depend on how you feel, because you play what you feel.

I think the one thing that I’ve learned is that you cannot predict what’s going to happen. You can’t sit back and try to figure out what people want or leave it up to them to decide. When we all started in this business we would dictate to the audience what was great and they picked up on that based on the fact that we believed that it was great. But that’s all changed. What’s happened in the last ten years or so because is that the technology now means that everyone with a computer can make music and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

I didn’t know the right names for anything at first, but I knew what knocked me out. Changes… man I dug.

What we do as artists is a combination of experience and imagination. How that creeps into your work is not so linear.

When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style…I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive…but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you’re going to try to teach jazz…you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.

I try stuff. I synthesize what’s of value with some of the other things I have at my disposal.

Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me.

Creativity shouldn’t be following radio; it should be the other way around.

I don’t believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from.

People involve themselves with the superficiality of Jazz without digging for its soul.

Indian music is very soulful and the only other school that develops improv to the high degree you find in Jazz.

Nothing is out of the question for me. I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light…Then I’m grateful.