Something That Will Never Let Us Down

“Always probing and rejecting, and this constant dedication to perfection, to the principle of inevitability,” Leonard Bernstein said. “(The composer) will give away his life and his energies just to make sure that one note follows another with complete inevitability.

“It seems rather an odd way to spend one’s life, but it isn’t so odd when we think that the composer, by doing this, leaves us at the finish with a feeling that something is right in the world, that checks throughout. Something that follows its own law consistently. Something we can trust, that will never let us down.”