Art for art's sake has never flourished in England. We are often called inartistic because our art is unconscious. Our drama and poetry, like our laws and our constitution, have evolved by accident while we thought we were doing something else, and so it will be with music. The composer must not shut himself up and think about art, he must live with his fellows and make his art an expression of the whole life of the community - if we seek for art we shall not find it.

The duty of the words is to say just as much as the music has left unsaid and no more.

Before going any further may we take it that the object of art is to obtain a partial revelation of that which is beyond human senses and human faculties - of …

The art of music above all the other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation.

How much of our literature, our political life, our friendships and love affairs, depend on being able to talk peacefully in a bar!

Creation always involves building upon something else. There is no art that doesn't reuse. And there will be less art if every reuse is taxed by the appropriat…

We must accept the dangers: the era of chairbound artists is over. But we must reject the bitterness ... Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, …