Art & Creativity Quote by Leo Ornstein

Ornstein isn’t selling beauty, craft, or even originality here; he’s staking everything on impact. The repetition of "move you" reads less like poetic emphasis than a self-check: a composer reminding himself what counts when technique, trends, and reputation start to feel like their own reward. It’s a disarmingly blunt mission statement from a figure who, early on, was branded a modernist provocateur, famous for abrasive piano pieces that rattled polite audiences. In that light, "move you" quietly refuses the lazy assumption that difficulty equals coldness. He’s insisting that shock, dissonance, and experiment are not the point; they’re just tools that either land emotionally or don’t.

The line also carries a kind of defensive purity. "The only reason" is an absolute that shuts down the usual art-world chatter: not commissions, not posterity, not the chess game of influence. Coming from a composer who lived a century and watched styles rise, harden into institutions, and collapse into nostalgia, it sounds like hard-earned minimalism. When you outlive movements, you learn how quickly yesterday’s radical language becomes today’s museum label.

There’s a democratic edge, too. The target isn’t critics or conservatories; it’s "you". Ornstein frames music as an encounter, not a monument. The subtext: if the work doesn’t reach a listener in the gut or nerves, all the cleverness in the score is just decorative math.