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Leonard Bernstein
9 quotes
“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 (1918–1990) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement from 1953, quoted in A Wonderful Life : 50 Eulogies to Lift the Spirit (2006) by Cyrus M. Copeland, p. 190
“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 (1918–1990) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Why Don't You Run Upstairs and Write a Nice Gershwin Tune?", in The Atlantic Monthly, April 1955.
“Any great work of art … 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 (1918–1990) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What Makes Opera Grand?", Vogue (December 1958)
“The trouble with you and me, Ned, is that we want everyone in the world to personally love us, and of course that's impossible; you just don't meet everyone in the world.”
Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Ned Rorem Paris Diary (1966)
“To Bach, notes were not just sounds but the very stuff of creation.”
Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Leonard Bernstein discusses material & structure in Bach's St. Matthew Passion," Bernstein Century - Bach: St. Matthew Passion / Nypo, Et Al (1999) (at 6:31)
“Callas? She was pure electricity.”
Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Callas: The Art and the Life (1974) by John Ardoin
“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 (1918–1990) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Unanswered Question (1976)
“The 20th century has been a badly written drama, from the beginning. The opposite of a Greek drama. Act one: Greed and hypocrisy leading to a genocidal world war, a boom, a crash, totalitarianism. Act two: Greed and hypocrisy leading to a genocidal world war, a boom, a crash, totalitarianism. Act three: Greed and hypocrisy … I don't dare continue.”
Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1918–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source