Leo Ornstein

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

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.

Leo Ornstein

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.

Leo Ornstein

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

Leo Ornstein

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.

Leo Ornstein

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

Leo Ornstein

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

Leo Ornstein

Yes, well, I tell you, because once I have completed a work, I simply am interested only in what I may hear in the next work that's coming.

Leo Ornstein

The danger of that - and there's a grave danger that I, myself, have to be very aware of - is that you become so involved and intrigued in the language that sometimes you lose track that that is only a means to an aesthetic experience that the listener has to get.

Leo Ornstein