'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 music is on. I'd like to get the guy who sold all those big businessmen the idea of putting music in the elevators, for he was really clever. What on earth good does it do anybody to hear those four or eight bars while going up a few flights.' Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812

'If the listener does eventually come to the point where he makes the ultimate performance by splicing tapes from other musicians' recordings, he will eventual…

'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…

'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…

'Music must be listened to; it is not enough to hear it. A duck hears also.'

It really sucks when music is so perfect you just don't need to hear it anymore.

A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.