Leonard Bernstein Quotes

United States, Composer
August 25, 1918 – October, 14, 1990.

Leonard Bernstein (/ˈbɜːrnstaɪn/ BURN-styne;August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the US to receive worldwide acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history."

Also known as Conductor, Author, Pianist

To Bach, notes were not just sounds but the very stuff of creation.

Leonard Bernstein
Callas? She was pure electricity.

Leonard Bernstein
- She

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
- Future
- Night
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
- World
- War
- Beginning
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
- Music
- Service
- Humble
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
- Time
- World
- Work
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
- Together
- Earth
- Water
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
- Music
- Why
- Experience

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
- World