Leonard Bernstein Quotes - Page 2

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• This must be the mission of every man of goodwill: to insist, unflaggingly, at risk of becoming a repetitive bore, but to insist on the achievement of a world in which the mind will have triumphed over violence.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Men, Risk, Mind

  19 Copy quote

• When the thunder rumbles,
  Now the age of gold is dead.
  When the dreams we've clung to
  Trying to stay young,
  Have left us parched and old instead.
  When my courage crumbles,
  When I feel confused and frail,
  When my spirit falters on decaying altars
  And my illusions fail --
  I go on right then.
  I go on again.
  I go on to say I will celebrate another day.
  I go on.
  If tomorrow tumbles
  And everything I love is gone,
  I will face regret all my days, and yet
  I will still go on.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Dream, Determination, Regret

  10 Copy quote

• A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Children, Night, Men

  "A Wonderful Life : 50 Eulogies to Lift the Spirit" by Cyrus M. Copeland, (p. 190), 2006.

  54 Copy quote

• When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Composer, Conductor

  23 Copy quote

• The gift of imagination is by no means an exclusive property of the artist; it is a gift we all share; to some degree or other all of us, all of you, are endowed with the powers of fantasy.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Mean, Artist, Imagination

  Leonard Bernstein (1982). “Findings”, Anchor

  29 Copy quote

• In the olden days, everybody sang. You were expected to sing as well as talk. It was a mark of the cultured man to sing.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Men, Mark, Wells

  14 Copy quote

• Life without music is unthinkable.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Music Is, Life Without Music, Without Music

  Leonard Bernstein (1982). “Findings”, Anchor

  70 Copy quote

• Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Communication, Two, Technique

  16 Copy quote

• I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Sound, Orchestra, Want

  23 Copy quote

• Our most emotionally active life is lived in our dreams, and our cells renew themselves most industriously in sleep. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great; he is free from the experience of hostility; he is a poet, and most like an angel.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Dream, Prayer, Sleep

  28 Copy quote

• The most difficult instrument to play in the orchestra is second fiddle.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Play, Orchestra, Instruments

  27 Copy quote

• We musicians, like everyone else, are numb with sorrow at this murder, and with rage at the senselessness of the crime. But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. And with each note we will honor the spirit of John Kennedy, commemorate his courage, and reaffirm his faith in the Triumph of the Mind.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Art, Honor, Mind

  20 Copy quote

• The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Funny, Music, Joy

  32 Copy quote

• Success is all very well as long as you don't inhale.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Long, Wells, Inhale

  7 Copy quote

• Any asshole can write a tone-row. It takes a composer to write a tune.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Writing, Tunes, Tone

  13 Copy quote

• Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation. Over it all hovers the greater spirit that is Mozart's - the spirit of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering - a spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all ages.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Compassion, Serenity, Suffering

  11 Copy quote

• It would be nice to hear someone accidentally whistle something of mine, somewhere, just once.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Music, Nice, Would Be

  1960 The Joy of Music.

  13 Copy quote

• Mozart's music is constantly escaping from its frame, because it cannot be contained in it.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Escaping, Music Is

  Leonard Bernstein (2007). “The Infinite Variety of Music”, p.69, Amadeus Press

  18 Copy quote

• Perhaps the chief requirement of [the conductor] is that he be humble before the composer; that he never interpose himself between the music and the audience; that all his efforts, however strenuous or glamorous, be made in the service of the composer's meaning - the music itself, which, after all, is the whole reason for the conductor's existence.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Humble, Effort, Requirements

  "The Cambridge Companion to Conducting". Book by José Antonio Bowen (p. 16), November 20, 2003.

  8 Copy quote

• I believe that from that Earth emerges a musical poetry, which is by the nature of its sources tonal. I believe that these sources cause to exist a phonology of music, which evolves from the universal known as the harmonic series.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Inspiration, Believe, Musical

  "The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard".

  12 Copy quote

• The 20th century has been a badly written drama, from the beginning.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Drama, Century, Has Beens

  "Great Performances (Leonard Bernstein: The Gift of Music)". TV Series, December 29, 1993.

  11 Copy quote

• Elvis is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century. He introduced the beat to everything, music, language, clothes, it's a whole new social revolution - the 60's comes from it.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Clothes, Revolution, Language

  13 Copy quote

• From New Year's on the outlook brightens; good humor lost in a mood of failure returns. I resolve to stop complaining.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Funny, New Year, Years

  23 Copy quote

• The Rhapsody is not a composition at all. It's a string of separate paragraphs stuck together - with a thin paste of flour and water... I don't think there has been such an inspired melodist on this earth since Tchaikovsky... but if you want to speak of a composer, that's another matter.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Thinking, Tchaikovsky, Water

  "Why Don't You Run Upstairs and Write a Nice Gershwin Tune?". The Atlantic Monthly, April 1955.

  14 Copy quote

• If you're a good composer, you steal good steals.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Stealing, Composer, Ifs

  8 Copy quote

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