Bernstein on composing

“There is something very satisfying about composing…you are letting yourself go, you write in a kind of trance, feeling you are doing very well. The next day you are quite capable of seeing that it wasn’t all that good, but that doesn’t matter so much.”

Leonard Bernstein, 1971

Cited at: Leonard Bernstein (@LennyBernstein) “There’s something very satisfying…”, Twitter, 24 August 2022, https://twitter.com/LennyBernstein/status/1562409388576362496?s=20&t=2GmFDokrhFC0jZqZdg6Ixg, accessed 29 August 2022.

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Sondheim’s pass times
Sondheim is a lover of games, and collects antique ones (many were destroyed in a fire that swept through the lower floors of the house in 1995). He has a passion for murder mysteries, puzzles (he once spent 18 months devising cryptic crosswords for New York magazine), word play and anagrams. His own name, he […]
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Practising an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You […]
Lord, I Love Your Commands – Psalm 118 (119)
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Trombone and piano
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Just as we checked the tuning …
In 1853, Brahms went on a tour of German cities with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi.  In the town of Celle, they were scheduled to play Beethoven’s Sonata in c minor (op. 30, no. 2): but it was found that the piano in the hall was tuned a half tone too low.  Reményi refused to […]
Articles, papers, program notes
ARTICLES & PAPERS: PROGRAM NOTES:
Misprints remain
“Some misprints remain on my scores, because for some reason I have always been in a rush to get the proofs to the publisher by the deadline. In the orchestral parts everything has usually been corrected.” Jean Sibelius, to Jussi Jalas, 27th July 1942 Cited at: www.sibelius.fi [accessed 31 Mar 2010].
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