Leonard Bernstein

Composer

1918-08-25

Books by Leonard Bernstein

The joy of music
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The infinite variety of music
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West Side story
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Quotes by Leonard Bernstein

I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.
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Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own.
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This will be our reply to violence:to make music more intensely,more beautifully,more devotedly than ever before.
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Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.
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The point is, art never stopped a war and never got anybody a job. That was never its function. Art cannot change events. But it can change people. It can affect people so that they are changed... because people are changed by art – enriched, ennobled, encouraged – they then act in a way that may affect the course of events... by the way they vote, they behave, the way they think.
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To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.
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To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.
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Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own.
Read quote
The point is, art never stopped a war and never got anybody a job. That was never its function. Art cannot change events. But it can change people. It can affect people so that they are changed... because people are changed by art – enriched, ennobled, encouraged – they then act in a way that may affect the course of events... by the way they vote, they behave, the way they think.
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I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.
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This will be our reply to violence:to make music more intensely,more beautifully,more devotedly than ever before.
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Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.
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Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.
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To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.
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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.
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This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.
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The great work of art is great because it creates a special world of its own. It 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.
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Even experimental composers, revolutionary composers, self-styled radicals are, in writing revolutionary music, recognizing the music that preceded them precisely by trying to avoid it.
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