Harrison Birtwistle Quotes


"You either are or you're not."
- Harrison Birtwistle
"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."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Music, Writing)

"When I was a kid, I wrote music - from the age of 11 until the age of 18."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Age, Music)

"When I dealt with set theory, I could never make it be the music that I wanted."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Music, Theory)

"This sounds horribly pretentious, but I like to think that if music hadn't existed, I could have invented it."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Music)

"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."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Work, Ideas, Moments, Writing)

"The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Influence, Names, Will, Worth)

"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."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Time, Attitude, Opera, Theatre, Years)

"The piece that had a large influence on me was Turangalila."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Influence)

"My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Ideas)

"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!"
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Attitude, Friends, Writing)

"Music is such a problem in the time it takes."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Music, Time)

"One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Music, Writing)

"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."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Music, People, English, Writing)

"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."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Music, Attitude, Sense)

"I think there are influences that you open the door to, and influences that come under the door."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Open)

"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."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Music, Time, Now, Theory)

"It's the irrational things that interest me."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Interest)

"In the end it doesn't matter what you do."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: End)

"I always write the pieces I want to write."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Want)

"The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Opera)

"I wrote music as soon as I knew notation."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Music)

"I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Music, Painting, Radical)

"I don't think there is much American music."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Music, American)

"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."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Change, Ideas)

"I didn't have a record player."
- Harrison Birtwistle
"I'm not an architectural composer."
- Harrison Birtwistle