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" I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism. "

Harrison Birtwistle

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" One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things. "

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" I don't think there is much American music. "

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

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" The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names. "

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" My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter. "

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" I'm not a music lover in the sense that I look for something to have on. I've never had that attitude to music. "

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" 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. "

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" You either are or you're not. "

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" 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. "

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" My operas and my theatre works are very formal pieces. "

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" I'm not an architectural composer. "

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" 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. "

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" I wrote music as soon as I knew notation. "

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" People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me. "

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" The piece that had a large influence on me was Turangalila. "

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" When I was a kid, I wrote music - from the age of 11 until the age of 18. "

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" The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles. "

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" 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. "

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" 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! "

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" When I dealt with set theory, I could never make it be the music that I wanted. "

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" It's the irrational things that interest me. "

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" Minimalism now is a reaction to what came before. It's absolutely of its time. Music moved into the set theory thing, and moved out of it. "

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" In the end it doesn't matter what you do. "

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" Music is such a problem in the time it takes. "

Harrison Birtwistle