Maestro

 

Journalist: What is the difference between a composer and a performer?

Leonard Bernstein: I suppose it's a difference, a personality difference which occurs between composer or any creator versus any performer. Any performer, whether it's Toscanini or Talula Bankhead or whoever it is leads a kind of a public life; an extrovert life if you will. It's an oversimplified word, but  something like that. Whereas a creative person sits alone in this great studio that you see here and writes all by himself and communicates with the world in a very private way and lives a rather grand inner life, rather than a grand outer life. And if you carry around both personalities, I suppose that means you become a schizophrenic and that's the end of it.