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" When I was a kid, there were really only two possible futures in the foreground, which were Orwell's '1984' and Huxley's 'Brave New World'. "
Max Richter
World
Brave
Kid
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" The thing that makes me want to write a piece of music is having something to talk about, you know? Something I want to get across. Because I'm a composer, music is my first language, and that's what I reach for when I want to convey something. "
Max Richter
Music
Language
You
" I don't have synesthesia, but I think when music is really intense, it's almost like it's more than just hearing. If you're at a gig, and there's just something amazing going on, it's not really just hearing: it's more of a total body sense, isn't it? You get transported, and all your senses kind of join up. "
Max Richter
Music
Kind
Body
" When I was a student, if you accidentally wrote a triad in a piece of yours, it was just sort of like you were breaking the law! You just couldn't do it. And that just meant you were a bad composer. "
Max Richter
Like
Law
Bad
" I assumed no one would ever listen to my music, and for quite a lot of years, I was right. "
Max Richter
Lot
Right
Music
" 'Memoryhouse' came out, and there wasn't a single review and zero sales, and after about a year, it was deleted. So I recorded The 'Blue Notebooks' on a little indie label, and my attitude was, 'Well, if nobody is listening, I might as well keep doing what I'm doing'. "
Max Richter
Attitude
Blue
Doing
" You can get away with a lot more in a film or television score. It is contextual. "
Max Richter
Score
More
Away
" People have written about 'Sleep' as if it were some kind of record attempt, but I could just put repeat marks at the end, and it would be 16 hours. It's not about that. "
Max Richter
Sleep
Repeat
End
" Often, especially young artists, you feel like you should be doing something. And I think that can be very destructive because creativity is about connecting with the stuff that's deep inside you and making something out of that. "
Max Richter
Deep
Creativity
You
" I can't usually sleep if I'm listening to music. It seems to fire up my mind, and I keep engaging with it to see what it's doing. "
Max Richter
See
Sleep
Music
" It feels like when novelists say they find their characters are doing things they never thought they'd do, the material comes alive, and that's how I feel making music. "
Max Richter
Music
Feel
Thought
" I think, as human beings, we all have a fundamental mode, a basic way of relating to the rest of reality, and for me, it's always instinctively been about sound making and trying to extract information, grammar, meaning from sound making. That's been my way of navigating reality that's very personal; a painter might say they make marks or look. "
Max Richter
Me
Reality
Rest
" I lived in Scotland a long time, and I became aware of Mogwai really from the beginning. They seemed to be fusing hard music structure and sort of raw sonics. They're just very creative thinkers, musical thinkers. "
Max Richter
Music
Time
Creative
" That childhood passion and involvement and being really submerged in something, that's the kind of state I'm looking for all the time - and preserving that sense of magical possibility and wonder that children have. I think, for artists, if you can stay connected to that, then you are in a good place. "
Max Richter
Childhood
Time
Passion
" 'Black Mirror' obviously has its own universe, with a very strong fingerprint and strong themes, and I was intrigued on reading. It's such a powerful piece of storytelling. "
Max Richter
Black
Strong
Reading
" 'Spring One' probably has only four bars of Vivaldi in it, but it feels like it's all Vivaldi. It's odd. It's a bit like walking around a sculpture, you just sort of see it from a different angle. "
Max Richter
Sculpture
Spring
Walking
" In Germany, people feel like they own classical music, that it is somehow theirs. Over there, everyone still learns to play, and the great composers don't seem alien. "
Max Richter
Alien
Feel
Great
" There's different ways to approach music for sleeping. Things like white noise are functional, like a lullaby. This is more like an inquiry, a question about how music and sleep fit together. "
Max Richter
Sleeping
White
Together
" We're living in our neoliberal, sort of late-stage capitalist culture where human beings are really like objects of production and consumption. We're on our screens all the time; we're kind of being sold at all the time. "
Max Richter
Living
Like
Human
" When I'm working with pictures, with images and storytelling, it's really about the sentiment and the emotional trajectory of the characters. That's really where the music lives, I think. That's what I'm focused on; that's what I respond to most strongly. "
Max Richter
Music
Think
Storytelling
" When we go to sleep ordinarily, we're doing something really private. It's kind of an intimate, private connection with our sort of physical humanity. "
Max Richter
Connection
Kind
Humanity
" All music is just a collision of sounds until you know its internal conventions and understand the nuances. It's a question of familiarity. "
Max Richter
Music
You
Understand
" I was living in a suburban town north of London, dutifully practicing my Mozart sonatas. And the milkman who delivered the milk in the mornings was kind of milkman by day, composer-artist by night. "
Max Richter
Night
Living
Day
" I came from a Conservatoire background where the idea of complexity was very much bound up with good music - good music was seen as complex and difficult to understand. "
Max Richter
Good
Up
Understand
" We've all got stories to tell that no one else knows. We've all got this truly unique experience of being. So I would say cultivate that, because then also you're cultivating something which is very natural to you. "
Max Richter
Experience
Got
Say
" I just really try to stay focused on what the material is wanting to do. My basic assumption is that no one will ever listen to it anyway. It's fidelity to the material. That's my contract: It's me and the material. And if it connects with other people, I'm thrilled. "
Max Richter
Stay Focused
Listen
Try
" I'm suspicious of the idea of categories in music and this idea of things being in boxes. To me, that seems unnatural. I write the music that somebody with my biography would write, and the thing that's always driven me is an enthusiasm for the material. I sort of follow the notes to where they want to go. "
Max Richter
Music
Want
Me
" Traditional methods for falling asleep work. Non-taxing, repetitive mental tasks have a lulling effect, and I built those patterns into 'Sleep'. "
Max Richter
Patterns
Work
Falling
" When I got the call about 'Arrival,' I was doubtful because the piece had had a life on cinema already, and we were getting to the point where the original context was sort of lost, and I didn't want that to happen. On the other hand, 'Arrival' itself is a political film because it's about unification and getting beyond boundaries. "
Max Richter
Want
Life
Lost
" If somebody says, 'Well, what are your favorite composers?' really, what they are saying is, 'What are your favorite composers apart from Bach?' Because obviously, Bach is your favorite composer if you are involved in music at all. "
Max Richter
Well
You
Involved
" When you're working in cinema, you often have a very, very compressed schedule - very few weeks to just kind of go through that whole process of reflection and refining - and it has to be done. "
Max Richter
Done
Process
You