My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.

Formalism is music that people don't understand at first hearing.

I strenuously object to the very word 'grotesque' which has become hackneyed to the point of nausea:I would prefer my music to be described as 'Scherzo-ish' in…

It seemed to me that had Haydn lived to our day he would have retained his own style while accepting something of the new at the same time. That was the kind o…

'Good composers don't borrow, they steal'

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

Any attempt to codify musical reality into a kind of imitation grammar (I refer mainly to the efforts associated with the Twelve-Tone System) is a brand of fet…