Any asshole can write a tone-row. It takes a composer to write a tune. — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
It is hard to think of another composer who so perfectly marries form and passion. — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer. — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
Perhaps the chief requirement of [the conductor] is that he be humble before the composer; that he never interpose himself between the… — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
Even experimental composers, revolutionary composers, self-styled radicals are, in writing revolutionary music, recognizing the music that preceded them precisely by trying to… — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer. — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
To be a success as a Broadway composer, you must be Jewish or gay. I'm both. — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
The Rhapsody is not a composition at all. It's a string of separate paragraphs stuck together - with a thin paste of… — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a… — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
I think it is time we learned the lesson of our century: that the progress of the human spirit must keep pace with technological… — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
Conducting is like making love to a hundred people at the same time. — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes. — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
Our most emotionally active life is lived in our dreams, and our cells renew themselves most industriously in sleep. We reach highest in meditation,… — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
Any asshole can write a tone-row. It takes a composer to write a tune. — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
From New Year's on the outlook brightens; good humor lost in a mood of failure returns. I resolve to stop complaining. — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable. — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
Einstein said that the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. So why do so many of us try to explain the… — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
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… — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too… — Leonard Bernstein Copy Share Image