Top Leo Ornstein Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Leo Ornstein Biography

Leo Ornstein (born Лев Орнштейн, Lev Ornshteyn) (c. December 11, 1895 – February 24, 2002) was a leading American experimental composer and pianist of the early twentieth century. His performances of works by avant-garde composers and his own innovative and even shocking pieces made him a cause célèbre on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Leo Ornstein Quotes

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.

Born, Differences, Manipulation, Stage, Student, Students

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.

Amount, Certain, People, Performance, Things, Way

But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.

Art, Ends, Music, Pure, Simple, Ultimately

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.

Writing, Thinking, Pieces, Urge, Inner, Piece

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

Composer, Mean, Play, Plays

I distrust anything that you don't hear.

Distrust, Hear

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.

Lines, Way, Difficult, Rationality, Line, Irrational

Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

Haphazard, Improvisation, Terribly

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.

Military, People, Precision, Symmetrically

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.

Thinking, Together, Lines, Having, Onto

You write it down because finally, when it's written down you do get it out of your system somewhat.

Writing, Written, Down, Somewhat, System, Write

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.

Moving, Writing, Pieces, Reason, Piece, Music

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.

Connection, Connections, Helps, Patterns, See, Want

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.

Writing, Men, Ears, Internal, Schoenberg, Essentially

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.

Writing, Pieces, Paper, Satisfaction, Right, Listener

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.

Compromise, Compromises, Express, Talking, Trying, Understands

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.

Thinking, Trying, Pieces, Piece, Think, Terrific