Quote For Late March

Igor Stravinsky, at work, from LIFE Magazine's photo archive.

The creator’s function is to sift the elements he receives from [the imagination], for human activity must impose limits upon itself. The more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free . . . My freedom consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings.

I shall go even further: my 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.

Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1947), 63–5.

Available from the USA shop here, and UK here (and excellent value might I add.)