10 Leonard Bernstein Quotes To Celebrate His Birthday
Author: Noel Jameson

10 Leonard Bernstein Quotes To Celebrate His Birthday
On the 25th of August we will celebrate Leonard Bernstein's
birthday, and what better way to do it than with some
fabulous Leonard Bernstein quotes? Orchestra and theater
fans everywhere appreciate Bernstein's contributions to the
music world, but the man was much more than just a
composer. He was, and is, an example and inspiration to
those who love to create music. These 10 Leonard Bernstein
quotes are perfect examples of why.

1. "Music can name the unnameable and communicate the
unknowable."

2. "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."

3. "I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like
itself. I want it to sound like the composer."

4. "Life without music is unthinkable. Music without life
is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total
embrace."

5. "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."

6. "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."

7. "Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the
writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time...
The wait is simply too long."

8. "The joy of music should never be interrupted by a
commercial."

9. "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. 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."

10. "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 was many things. An artist, a composer,
conductor and a pianist... Perhaps the most important of
all is that he was a teacher and a mentor to some and an
inspiration to many. These Leonard Bernstein quotes shed
light on why so many listened when dear "Lenny" spoke.


About the Author:

For more music quotes, check out the popular music quotes
section of Famous-Quotes-And-Quotations.com, a website that
specializes in 'Top 10' lists of quotations in dozens of
categories.
http://www.famous-quotes-and-quotations.com/music-quote.html