Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernsteinwas 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."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth25 August 1918
CityLawrence, MA
CountryUnited States of America
Life without music is unthinkable. Music without life is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.
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.
I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.
...we can all shut-up and go back to our caves.
When the thunder rumbles, Now the age of gold is dead. When the dreams we've clung to Trying to stay young, Have left us parched and old instead. When my courage crumbles, When I feel confused and frail, When my spirit falters on decaying altars And my illusions fail -- I go on right then. I go on again. I go on to say I will celebrate another day. I go on. If tomorrow tumbles And everything I love is gone, I will face regret all my days, and yet I will still go on.
When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.
It is the artists of the world, the feelers and the thinkers who will ultimately save us; who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing and shout the big dreams.