 I don't have ideas so much as there are things which constantly evolve... there are various threads or layers, if you like, which change. |
| My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific! |
| It's the irrational things that interest me. |
| Music is such a problem in the time it takes. |
| One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things. |
| I always write the pieces I want to write. |
| When I was confronted with official tuition, the academic thing, I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11. |
| The piece that had a large influence on me was Turangalila. |
| The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles. |
| You either are or you're not. |
| I wrote music as soon as I knew notation. |
| There are rhythmic ideas which sometimes only work up to a point. In writing there are moments when it just comes off the page, it's not just a collection of notes. |
| My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter. |
| I don't think there is much American music. |
| The theatre only knows what it's doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: What are we going to do in five years' time? A completely different attitude. |
| I'm not an architectural composer. |
| I didn't have a record player. |
| This sounds horribly pretentious, but I like to think that if music hadn't existed, I could have invented it. |
| When I was a kid, I wrote music - from the age of 11 until the age of 18. |
| I think there are influences that you open the door to, and influences that come under the door. |
