Harrison Birtwistle is a famous Composer from United Kingdom, he/she is 90 years old and still alive, born July 15, 1934.
Zodiac:
He/she is born under the zodiac cancer, who is known for Emotion, Diplomatic, Intensity, Impulsive, Selective.
Our collection contains 28 quotes who is written / told by Harrison.
28 Famous quotes by Harrison Birtwistle
"When I was a kid, I wrote music - from the age of 11 until the age of 18"
"Minimalism now is a reaction to what came before. It's absolutely of its time. Music moved into the set theory thing, and moved out of it"
"When I was confronted with official tuition, the academic thing, I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11"
"The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles"
"People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me"
"My operas and my theatre works are very formal pieces"
"I didn't have a record player"
"I always write the pieces I want to write"
"The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names"
"You either are or you're not"
"The theatre only knows what it's doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: What are we going to do in five years' time? A completely different attitude"
"The piece that had a large influence on me was Turangalila"
"In the end it doesn't matter what you do"
"I think there are influences that you open the door to, and influences that come under the door"
"My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific!"
"I'm not an architectural composer"
"I'm not a music lover in the sense that I look for something to have on. I've never had that attitude to music"
"I don't think there is much American music"
"When I dealt with set theory, I could never make it be the music that I wanted"
"There are rhythmic ideas which sometimes only work up to a point. In writing there are moments when it just comes off the page, it's not just a collection of notes"
"I wrote music as soon as I knew notation"
"My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter"
"Music is such a problem in the time it takes"
"It's the irrational things that interest me"
"I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism"
"I don't have ideas so much as there are things which constantly evolve... there are various threads or layers, if you like, which change"
"This sounds horribly pretentious, but I like to think that if music hadn't existed, I could have invented it"
"One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things"
