Aaron Copland

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

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

During these years I began to feel an increasing dissatisfaction with the relations of the music-loving public and the living composer. It seemed to me that we composers were in danger of working in a vacuum.

I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.

When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.

Music is interior decoration.

But the guitar, my lady, whether well played or badly played, well strung or badly strung, is pleasant to hear and listen to; being so easy to learn, it attracts the busiest of talented people and makes them put aside loftier occupations so that they may hold a guitar in their hands.

I’ve said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.

Jazz music is haunted by its own hungry ghosts.

There’s a lot of recreational Jazz going on, where cats learn a particular style and become sharks on somebody else’s language.

With the birth of the first artist, came the inevitable afterbirth… the first critic

When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.

I don’t think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.

I learned my songs from the birds of the Brazilian forest.

Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave it alone.

I think you can play anything you wanna as long as you take the audience along with you.

Jazz music can relax, soothe and uplift the mind when you absorb it.

It’s not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

We quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

I have a lot of albums yet to do.