Modern music does not exist. Music is not a matter of fashion. New music does exist, at least in as much as we speak a different language today from those that people spoke in the past. What we say is the same as what was said before; only the expression has changed ...Art cannot go backwards; the wall of history behind us is insurmountable. In music as in biology, the father exists in the son, and, genealogically, I am a product of all the old masters whom I admire. I HEAR AND SEE MUSIC. All my senses, and in fact my total physical being, participate in the act of musical creation. But the principal element and determining factor in the composer's work is hearing. If my ear is not pleased, my creative instinct does not respond.
The ear has its own appetite, and it assembles, assimilates, orders and elaborates the construction, as the mouth does food ...The ear is the mouth of music. But I use the word "appetite" in the spiritual sense, as St. Augustine uses it in describing the appetite of the soul, which both exalts and sublimates itself as it gains more appetite for Light and for God. Both the imaginative faculty and our musical ear are sterile without light, grace, and guidance from above. To be worthy to receive these we must pray in the purest manner and strip the soul of its inferior appetites. Igor Strawinsky