Leonard Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, and educator. He is known for his compositions including West Side Story and On the Town, and for his acclaimed conducting of the New York Philharmonic. He was also a renowned music educator, hosting the television show Young People's Concerts, and was the first American-born conductor to lead the New York Philharmonic. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Leonard Bernstein on beatles, music, dynamic.
To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.
Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.
Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.
Life without music is unthinkable.
The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm
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.
I can't live one day without hearing music, playing it , studying it , or thinking about it .
Children must receive music instruction as naturally as food, with as much pleasure as they derive from a ball game, and this must happen from the beginning of their lives.
Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable. — Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein Short Quotes
The most difficult instrument to play in the orchestra is second fiddle.
I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.
When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.
I believe that man's noblest endowment is his capacity to change.
Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.
The 20th century has been a badly written drama, from the beginning.
Wine snobbery, of course, is part showmanship, part sophistication, part knowledge, and part bluff
Success is all very well as long as you don't inhale.
I hate you, Richard Wagner . . . but I hate you on my knees.
...we can all shut-up and go back to our caves.
Leonard Bernstein Quotes About Music
The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world. — Leonard Bernstein
The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial. — Leonard Bernstein
Life without music is meaningless, music without life is academic. — Leonard Bernstein
Life without music is unthinkable. Life without music is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace. — Leonard Bernstein
It would be nice to hear someone accidentally whistle something of mine, somewhere, just once. — Leonard Bernstein
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
Einstein said that "the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious." So why do so many of us try to explain the beauty of music, thus depriving it of its mystery? — Leonard Bernstein
Even experimental composers, revolutionary composers, self-styled radicals are, in writing revolutionary music, recognizing the music that preceded them precisely by trying to avoid it. — Leonard Bernstein
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
Bernstein has been disclosing musical secrets that have been well known for over 400 years. — Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein Famous Quotes And Sayings
Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable. — Leonard Bernstein
Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great. — Leonard Bernstein
You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something. It doesn't matter what. In five or ten minutes, the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over. — Leonard Bernstein
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
From New Year's on the outlook brightens; good humor lost in a mood of failure returns. I resolve to stop complaining. — Leonard Bernstein
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
Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air. — Leonard Bernstein
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
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time — Leonard Bernstein
I believe in people. I feel, love, need and respect people above all else, including natural scenery, organized piety and nationalistic superstructures. One human figure on the slope of a mountain can make the mountain disappear for me, one person fighting for truth can disqualify for me the entire system which had dispensed it. — Leonard Bernstein
What [Louis Armstrong] does is real, and true, and honest, and simple, and even noble. Every time this man puts his trumpet to his lips, even if only to practice three notes, he does it with his whole soul. — Leonard Bernstein
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
Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own. — Leonard Bernstein
When the study of the arts leads to the adoration of the formula (heaven forbid), we shall be lost. — Leonard Bernstein
It is hard to think of another composer who so perfectly marries form and passion. — Leonard Bernstein
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
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
Which of my Jewish roots do I follow? — Leonard Bernstein
I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes. — Leonard Bernstein
It is the artists of the world, the feelers and the thinkers who will ultimately save us; who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing and shout the big dreams. — Leonard Bernstein
A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers. — Leonard Bernstein
Mozart's music is constantly escaping from its frame, because it cannot be contained in it. — Leonard Bernstein
I've been all over the world and I've never seen a statue of a critic. — Leonard Bernstein
I have two answers to everything and one answer to nothing. — Leonard Bernstein
I think it is time we learned the lesson of our century: that the progress of the human spirit must keep pace with technological and scientific progress, or that spirit will die. It is incumbent on our educators to remember this; and music is at the top of the spiritual must list. When the study of the arts leads to the adoration of the formula (heaven forbid), we shall be lost. But as long as we insist on maintaining artistic vitality, we are able to hope in man — Leonard Bernstein
If you're a good composer, you steal good steals. — Leonard Bernstein
Any asshole can write a tone-row. It takes a composer to write a tune. — Leonard Bernstein
When the thunder rumbles,Now the age of gold is dead.When the dreams we've clung toTrying 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 altarsAnd 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 tumblesAnd everything I love is gone,I will face regret all my days, and yetI will still go on. — Leonard Bernstein
To be a success as a Broadway composer, you must be Jewish or gay. I'm both. — Leonard Bernstein
Conducting is like making love to a hundred people at the same time. — Leonard Bernstein
Life Lessons by Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein taught us to never give up on our dreams, no matter how difficult they may seem. He worked hard to achieve his goals and persevered even when faced with adversity.
He also showed us the importance of collaboration and teamwork in order to achieve success. He worked with many talented individuals to create some of the most iconic musical works of the 20th century.
Finally, Bernstein also taught us the importance of giving back to the community. He was a passionate advocate for music education and was committed to making music accessible to everyone.
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