Nadia Boulanger Quotes

To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion.

Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.

It is nothing to succeed if one has not taken great trouble, and it is nothing to fail if one has done the best one could.

Loving a child doesn't mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult.

The art of music is so deep and profound that to approach it very seriously only is not enough. One must approach music with a serious rigor and, at the same time, with a great, affectionate joy.

Do not take up music unless you would rather die than not do so.

Do nothing for effect. Do it for truth.

Without discipline, there can be no freedom.

Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for.

False notes can be forgiven, false music cannot.

It is one thing to be gifted and quite another thing to be worthy of one's own gift.

There is nothing boring in life except ourselves.

Music was not invented by the composer, but found.

I adore tradition. I cannot stand habit. Simply to repeat is nothing, also to destroy is nothing. Tradition is never interrupted, we are always evolving but never interrupted.

Without order there can be no inner satisfaction. Without inner satisfaction there can be no freedom. Without freedom there is no joy.

As far as the execution is concerned ... the most frequent and most serious mistake is to follow the music instead of preceding it.

Art is not emotion. Art is the medium in which emotion is expressed.

The Constitution of the United States is not a mere lawyers' document; it is a vehicle of life, and its spirit is always the spirit of the age.

Great art likes chains. The greatest artists have created art within bounds. Or else they have created their own chains.

[On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've gotten over my original astonishment.

Everything we know by heart enriches us and helps us find ourselves. If it should get in the way of finding ourselves, it is because we have no personality.

A great work is made out of a combination of obedience and liberty.

The history of harmony is the history of the development of the human ear, which has gradually assimilated, in their natural order, the successive intervals of the harmonic series.

Without a strong cup to carry the emotion, it is only a curiosity. Great art can come to us only in strong cups. Without emotion, there is nothing to carry.

You should never listen to someone practice. That is their work and theirs alone.

Never forget that your days are blessed. You may know how to profit by them, or you may not, but they are blesses.

[On the music of Richard Strauss:] Too many notes!

Life is denied by lack of attention whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.

Nothing is better than music.... It has done more for us than we have the right to hope for.

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice love passion.

Always remember your days are blessed. You may know how to profit from them or you may not, but they are blessed.