'If the listener does eventually come to the point where he makes the ultimate performance by splicing tapes from other musicians' recordings, he will eventually become just as bored with it as with other recordings, for it will still always be the same. Look, for instance, at electronic music. The boys are already becoming bored with what they do because they put it irrevocably on tape. The best indication of this is that more and more they are mixing the live performance element with their tapes.' Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812

'I hope my recordings of my own works won't inhibit other people's performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn't always get the exact tempo one wants, alth…

'I object to background music no matter how good it is. Composers want people to listen to their music, they don't want them doing something else while their m…

'For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it…

Out of my own great woe I make my little songs.

It's so funny because when you do smoke weed and write a song, you're like, 'Yeah, this is brilliant, this is excellent!' - and the next morning you go back an…

If you're listening to this song You may think the chords are going wrong But they're not We just wrote it like that