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Quotes by Composer

"There are always things to examine. What's great is not feeling that I have to refuse any of them. Maybe no good from a PR perspective, but from the point of view of everyday life, it keeps things interesting."

"I'm trying to get hold of them... the trouble is a lot of the companies that recorded and produced the albums went bust, so I don't know where to get the masters."

"We felt we had to know something of his back story. I don't think people in the cinema would just accept that he's there. I think we had to learn how he (got there)."

"Essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns."

"Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds."

"What makes a specific quality or quantity of innovation retain its intense newness over the years?"

"I thought in terms of the enthusiasm of doing it. I didn't think about whether I was ready."

"I have friends who have a CD mastering plant in Hollywood and they are very sceptical about European record labels' understanding of digital technology."

"This sounds horribly pretentious, but I like to think that if music hadn't existed, I could have invented it."


"For Ryan's Daughter I used a total of eight harps, something that was, at least, weird."

"I like business and personal life to be distinct."

"I never force myself to be devout except when I feel so inspired, and never compose hymns of prayers unless I feel within me real and true devotion."

"This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble."

"This is not to say that the Scots are not fine people, but they were all sort of... well, my grandfather was a minister and sort of Protestant, and this was rather depressing to me."

"I almost never try to make the audience comfortable. I wouldn't want that if I were in the audience."
Want,

"The past nine years in San Diego have represented such a period of questioning."


"Even before he had one book published, Jack was one of those people you could feel was very special."

"I think things changed as a result of a certain perception of our politics. When we went through our zealous, self-righteous period it didn't exactly win us any friends."

"When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't."

"At the end of the competition, I played the Liszt concerto and I felt my head was on the block. Well, I won."

"The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance."

"Our castle is not imposing, but is well built, and surrounded by a very fine garden. I live in the bailiff's house."

"Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language."

"There is a world of difference between a Mahler eighth note and a normal eighth note."

"Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them."

"Because I was small, I was getting the hell kicked out of me playing football."

"The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service."

"I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance."

"In my piano concerto I developed this polyphony to much higher complexity."
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