I never understood the need for a "live" audience. My music, because of its extreme quietude, would be happiest with a dead one.
Igor StravinskyThe performance of performance has developed to such an extent in recent years that it challenges the music itself and will soon threaten it with relegation.
Igor StravinskyAn audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.
Igor StravinskyMusic is given to us specifically to make order of things, to move from an anarchic, individualistic state to a regulated, perfectly concious one, which alone insures vitality and durability.
Igor StravinskyMy freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.
Igor Stravinsky