Daily Inspiration Quote by Peter Maxwell Davies

Maxwell Davies is laying down a composer's prime directive: never write down to the room. It reads like advice, but it’s also a quiet rebuke of a whole cultural habit - treating contemporary music as something that must be diluted for performers to survive it and for listeners to tolerate it. Coming from a figure who could be both rigorously modernist and fiercely pragmatic, the line argues that difficulty isn’t the enemy; condescension is.

The grammar matters. “Either players or audience” refuses the usual split where composers flatter one side and blame the other. Performers aren’t just technicians to be managed, and listeners aren’t a “general public” that needs soft edges and explanatory handrails. Maxwell Davies is insisting on a triangular respect: composer, player, audience. If one corner gets patronized, the whole structure collapses into either empty virtuosity or empty accessibility.

The subtext is political in the broadest sense. A culture that underestimates its audience trains it to expect less, then points to that lowered appetite as proof that ambition is pointless. Likewise, underestimating players turns rehearsal into compliance rather than interpretation. His phrasing - “in any circumstances” - signals a refusal to let institutions off the hook, whether the pressure is a tight budget, a conservative orchestra, or a skeptical hall.

It’s also a defense of surprise. Maxwell Davies built music that asks for attention, stamina, curiosity. This line is him betting that those qualities can be invited rather than assumed absent - and that respect is the most practical form of artistic risk.