Bernstein and Beethoven

".....the inexplicable ability to know what the next note has to be. Beethoven had this gift in the degree that leaves them ( other composers ) all panting in the rear guard."

" Form is only an empty word, a shell, without this gift of inevitability; a composer can write a string of perfectly molded sonata-allegro movements, with every rule obeyed, and still suffer from bad form. Beethoven broke all the rules, and turned out pieces of breath-taking rightness. Rightness--that's the word! When you get the feeling that whatever note succeeds the last is the only possible note that can rightly happen at that instant, in the context, then chances are your listening to Beethoven. "

- Leonard Bernstein