Leo Ornstein Quotes

29 quotes in 419 categories

• Besides merely some pleasure that we get out of the combinations of pitches together and lines, I think that there is some satisfaction that we…
• The difference between the student and the born composer is he really hears the thing, and they have to stage it and manipulate it by…
• In writing music, the structure of each piece is a very important factor.
• A person improvising is sometimes very fortunate that just at that second things coincide.
• Because essentially Schoenberg was an extremely gifted man. And in spite of many of his theories and so on, when he really began to write…
• When I was speaking about communicating, I meant that the listener - we have to reach the listener; otherwise, of course, you're writing the piece,…
• By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There’s no specific line,…
• We can use techniques in modifying things, in controlling things, but the first impulse has to be something that you simply cannot make just out…
• But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.
• By the visual pattern, but mostly I'm guided entirely by my ear, what I hear.
• Hopefully, I have a certain amount of what you call musical talent.
• I distrust anything that you don't hear.
• I think recordings have been a terrific advance because now, when you have a piece of music, particularly something that appears to the listener very…
• I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden.
• I'm really interested in writing a piece of music that will move you, that will really move you. That is really the only reason that…
• Improvisation is terribly haphazard.
• It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.
• No, I think that a person writes a poem because they have an inner urge of something that they want to express, and I think…
• Now, there are sometimes making a connection between one section and another that sometimes you do want to see the pattern because it helps you…
• Now, what we are not talking about, what you're really coming to, is what compromises one makes so that the listener understands somewhat of what…

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