Leo Ornstein Quotes

Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

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.

Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.

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.

I distrust anything that you don't hear.

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

I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden.

Hopefully, I have a certain amount of what you call musical talent.

By the visual pattern, but mostly I'm guided entirely by my ear, what I hear.

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.

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.

In writing music, the structure of each piece is a very important factor.

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.

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

A person improvising is sometimes very fortunate that just at that second things coincide.

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

I would say that Op 31 had brought music just to the very edge … I just simply drew back and said, “beyond that lies complete chaos”.