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" This sounds horribly pretentious, but I like to think that if music hadn't existed, I could have invented it. "
Harrison Birtwistle
Think
Pretentious
Music
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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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" The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names. "
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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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" 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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" 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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You
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" The piece that had a large influence on me was Turangalila. "
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Me
Large
" The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles. "
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" I don't think there is much American music. "
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American
" 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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Doing
Time
" My operas and my theatre works are very formal pieces. "
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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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Set
Wanted
Dealt
" I wrote music as soon as I knew notation. "
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" My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter. "
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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. "
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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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