The whole trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it over again and play it rather louder. Most Russian music, indeed, consists in ringing changes on this device, skilfully disguised though the fact may be.

Music, from being an ordered succession of sounds, has become a matter of 'sonorities', and anyone who can produce a brightly coloured brick of unusual shape i…

There is a definite limit to the length of time a composer can go on writing in one dance rhythm (this limit is obviously reached by Ravel towards the end of L…

The composer is now faced, not with further experiment but with the more difficult task of consolidating the experiments of this vertiginous period. He is like…

In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music. They are pathetic, tender, passionate, melancholy, solemn…

The music of the people is like a rare and lovely flower growing amidst encroaching weeds. Thousands pass it, while others trample it under foot, and thus the …

I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself h…