52 Quotes by Leo Ornstein

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”.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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