'Much of the music is a Merzbild, put together from whatever came to hand. I mean, for example...the Alberti-bass horn solo accompanying the Messenger. I also mean the fusion of such widely divergent types of music as the Folies Bergeres tune at No. 40 ('The girls enter, kicking') and the Wagnerian 7th-chords at Nos. 58 and 74.'

'What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.'

'Composers combine notes, that's all.'

'It is the transcendent (or 'abstract' or 'self-contained') nature of music that the new so called concretism--Pop Art, eighteen-hour slices-of-reality films, …

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…

I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious a…

It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing).