Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning… except its own, a meaning in musical terms, not in terms of words.

Bernstein is arguing for music’s autonomy: unlike literature or painting, it does not “mean” by pointing to external objects, narratives, or verbal propositions. Its significance is internal—created by relationships of pitch, rhythm, harmony, timbre, and form—and can be grasped only in those terms. The remark pushes back against attempts to translate music into paraphrasable messages (“this passage means X”) while still insisting that music is not meaningless; it has a kind of meaning that is uniquely musical. Implicitly, Bernstein also elevates music’s expressive power: it can move and communicate profoundly without being reducible to words.