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.

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.

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.

The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

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.

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

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

[on Glastonbury] I started off the show and I completely messed up the music. And me, as you can imagine by this phone call, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. So it really put me into a slightly depressed state.

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

I don’t intend to be a performing flea anymore. I was the dreamweaver, but although I’ll be around I don’t intend to be running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself. I don’t want to die at 40.

Why Jazz? This is just the way I see music.

Dance music-as I keep saying, you can dance to a windshield wiper… a windshield wiper that’s fairly steady gives you a beat and all you need is an out-of-tune playing ‘Melancholy Baby’ and you’ve got dance music.

I like to know for whom I’m writing – it makes the composition easier to do.

Music was our wife and we loved her. We stayed with her, clothed her and put diamond rings on her hands.

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.

Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I’m trying to do more. When I’m singing, I don’t want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.

The better it gets, the fewer of us know it.

They’re not particular whether you’re playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

Without jazz, life would be a mistake.