In my view, the composer, just as the poet, the sculptor or the painter, is in duty bound to serve Man, the people. He must beautify human life and defend it. He must be a citizen first and foremost, so that his art might consciously extol human life and lead man to a radiant future. Such is the immutable code of art as I see it.

The time is past when music was written for a handful of aesthetes. Today vast crowds of people have come face to face with serious music and are waiting with …

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…

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…

I decided (after listening to a 'talk radio' commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life) that I was …

Artists shouldn't be made famous. You know... they're just ... as important as... um doctors, and priests ... or maybe not as important sometimes, and yet they…

What life means to me is to put the content of Shelley into the form of Zola. The proletarian writer is a writer with a purpose; he thinks no more of 'art for …