Leo Ornstein quotes

But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple. (Leo Ornstein)
You write it down because finally, when it's written down you do get it out of your system somewhat. View quote
Leo Ornstein
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, as I say, only for the satisfaction of seeing it on the paper for yourself, and then it ends right there. View quote
Leo Ornstein
I distrust anything that you don't hear. View quote
Leo Ornstein
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, as you know. View quote
Leo Ornstein
Improvisation is terribly haphazard. View quote
Leo Ornstein
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 technical equipment. View quote
Leo Ornstein
Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract. View quote
Leo Ornstein
Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language. View quote
Leo Ornstein
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 music, he still was guided very much by his internal hearing, by what we call your internal ear. View quote
Leo Ornstein
A person improvising is sometimes very fortunate that just at that second things coincide. (Leo Ornstein)
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 to lead into the next thing - it's a rhetorical thing, where you just see how the pattern has to go into the next thing. View quote
Leo Ornstein
There are some people, by the way, that associate a certain amount of visualization with the performance of music. Those are people that really are not centrally concerned only with music, the traditional things. View quote
Leo Ornstein
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 get in the fact of having this diffuse thing organized very concretely and put onto a frame and have it actually decided. View quote
Leo Ornstein
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 I'm writing music. View quote
Leo Ornstein
In writing music, the structure of each piece is a very important factor. View quote
Leo Ornstein
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 of technique, or else it becomes perfectly evident that it is nothing but technique that you're exercising. View quote
Leo Ornstein
Hopefully, I have a certain amount of what you call musical talent. View quote
Leo Ornstein
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 complicated, there's really a push to the world to try to figure out what it was that he was hearing. View quote
Leo Ornstein
I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden. View quote
Leo Ornstein
To the person that deals in visualizations, I suppose there is something rather exciting about a whole set of people - they all going symmetrically, up or down, in a military sort of precision. (Leo Ornstein)
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 it's that inner urge that you want to express when you write a piece of music. View quote
Leo Ornstein
By the visual pattern, but mostly I'm guided entirely by my ear, what I hear. View quote
Leo Ornstein
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 you're doing, what you're trying to express. View quote
Leo Ornstein
It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best. View quote
Leo Ornstein

Leo Ornstein

Leo Ornstein - Image
Occupation: American Composer
Born: December 2, 1893
Died: February 24, 2002
Quotes count: 28