"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"
About this Quote
Ornstein is quietly torching a certain strain of modernist vanity: the idea that a piece can be “successful” even if it dies on the page. Coming from a composer who helped pioneer early 20th-century sonic upheaval, that’s not a plea for safe, audience-friendly prettiness. It’s a blunt reminder that radical technique still needs a human landing.
The phrasing does the work. “Reach the listener” frames communication as an active task, almost physical - you don’t wait to be understood; you build the bridge. Then he pivots to a dry, self-aware caricature: writing “only for the satisfaction of seeing it on the paper.” That image is devastating because it’s so mundane. Not “for art,” not “for truth,” but for the private little dopamine hit of completion. He’s warning that the fetish of notation - the score as artifact, the composer as solitary genius - can become its own dead-end aesthetic.
Context matters: Ornstein lived through the century when Western art music increasingly professionalized its alienation. As concert life ossified and academic composition grew more self-referential, “communication” became suspect, as if clarity were a compromise. Ornstein flips the prestige hierarchy. If the listener can’t be reached, he implies, the piece isn’t bravely difficult; it’s functionally unfinished. The subtext is almost ethical: art that refuses relationship doesn’t just risk obscurity - it abdicates responsibility.
The phrasing does the work. “Reach the listener” frames communication as an active task, almost physical - you don’t wait to be understood; you build the bridge. Then he pivots to a dry, self-aware caricature: writing “only for the satisfaction of seeing it on the paper.” That image is devastating because it’s so mundane. Not “for art,” not “for truth,” but for the private little dopamine hit of completion. He’s warning that the fetish of notation - the score as artifact, the composer as solitary genius - can become its own dead-end aesthetic.
Context matters: Ornstein lived through the century when Western art music increasingly professionalized its alienation. As concert life ossified and academic composition grew more self-referential, “communication” became suspect, as if clarity were a compromise. Ornstein flips the prestige hierarchy. If the listener can’t be reached, he implies, the piece isn’t bravely difficult; it’s functionally unfinished. The subtext is almost ethical: art that refuses relationship doesn’t just risk obscurity - it abdicates responsibility.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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