"I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism."
"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."
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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."
"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."
"Music is such a problem in the time it takes."