This will be our reply to violence: to make music more

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” Thus spoke Leonard Bernstein, master of harmony and prophet of peace, in a time when the world was shaken by hatred and destruction. His words are not merely the musings of a composer—they are a commandment to the spirit: when darkness rises, answer it not with more darkness, but with beauty, with devotion, with the sacred fire of creation.

The ancients would have said: “Do not feed the fire of war with more fire, but quench it with water from the eternal spring.” Bernstein knew that violence grows when met with anger, but shrinks when faced with love expressed in its purest form. Music, to him, was not entertainment but a weapon of the soul, a force that could pierce through hatred and awaken what is human in even the hardest heart. To play “more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly” was to proclaim that art shall always rise higher than brutality.

Consider the story of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, written when the composer was deaf, embittered, and surrounded by the turbulence of his age. Yet from his silence emerged the “Ode to Joy,” a hymn to universal brotherhood. Nations at war and peoples divided have since stood together to sing its chorus. Even after centuries, it answers violence not with blood, but with music, echoing Bernstein’s creed: the response to destruction must be creation, multiplied and magnified.

Bernstein himself lived this truth after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. In the face of grief and national despair, he declared that his only answer was to make music with deeper passion and meaning. For where words failed, symphonies could speak. Where politics crumbled, melodies could unite. His reply to sorrow was not silence, but song; not despair, but beauty. In this, he became not just a conductor of orchestras, but a conductor of the human soul.

The meaning of his words is thus: the greatest rebellion against hatred is the creation of beauty. Violence seeks to break, but art builds. Violence seeks to silence, but music sings louder. Violence feeds on fear, but devotion to truth and beauty starves it of power. To answer cruelty with greater humanity is to declare that darkness cannot and will not rule the human heart.

The lesson for us is clear: when struck by the blows of injustice, create. When silenced by grief, sing. When the world falls into anger, answer with compassion made tangible. Your reply need not be music alone—it may be the work of your hands, the kindness of your deeds, the integrity of your labor. Whatever your gift, use it intensely, beautifully, and devotedly, so that your very life becomes an answer to the brokenness of the world.

Practical counsel follows: do not despair when violence seems to reign. Instead, turn your pain into creation. Write, paint, build, teach, love—let your reply be a force greater than what sought to destroy you. Support artists who speak for peace, and be an artist of peace in your own life. In this way, you become part of the eternal chorus that drowns out hatred with harmony.

So remember this, O children of tomorrow: violence may scar the world, but it cannot silence the soul. As Leonard Bernstein declared, let your reply be music—more intense, more beautiful, more devoted than ever before. For in doing so, you will prove that love endures beyond death, that beauty rises from ashes, and that humanity will always outsing the voice of destruction.