"I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism."
"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."
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Source: The Observer, April 14, 1996.
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More quotes by Harrison Birtwistle
"I didn't have a record player."
"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."
"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."
"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."