I've heard though that there is a younger generation of tonal French composers who are reacting with vigour.

Craft is part of the creative process.

Over the years I have tried to develop something which is technically assured.

The project which we developed, however, was for a sound piece and I was initially curious that a sculptor should be interested in working with a musician, especially on a project for radio.

It makes sense to invest in new work. It's almost like having a research department in a scientific laboratory. You have to try things out. You'll make some bad mistakes. Some things will fail but at least you'll energise the organisation.

I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.

As I had collaborated with visual artists before whether on installations, on performance pieces, in the context of theatre works and as I had taught for a time in art colleges the idea of writing music in response to painting was not alien.

Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years.

I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.

It's rather like attending a university seminar where you are talking to a few gifted specialists who deliver a paper to an audience of their peers. That's one way of making music.

I have friends who have a CD mastering plant in Hollywood and they are very sceptical about European record labels' understanding of digital technology.

Somehow in the 20th Century an idea has developed that music is an activity or skill which is not comprehensible to the man in the street. This is an arrogant assertion and not necessarily a true one.

There's another way of making music, by touching the lives and feelings of ordinary people.

Still, American composers working in France have had a pretty hard time.

The academic area of new music or modern music festivals is not something which attracts me at all.

I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.

Similarly you can make a transition from one set of instruments to another imperceptibly.

I currently spend a lot of time thinking about orchestration and every detail of a piece.

People like Arvo Part would not have been taken seriously 20 years ago.

Like an apparently strict musical form it breaks the five minute whole into its structural parts - a descriptive preamble, the action of taking the cards, the development of the cards' manipulation and the revelation of what has been achieved.

When Philip Glass asked me if I would be interested in doing a new recording of Jesus' Blood he assumed that I would do something similar to the first version and wanted to know what other pieces would be on the same CD.

One thing I'm doing on the new Titanic recording is actually bringing in different acoustic spaces.

What was once underground is now coming to the surface.

Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.

I work very fast, keeping the ideas flowing but making sure they come out the way I intended.

I've heard though that there is a younger generation of tonal French composers who are reacting with vigour.

The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics.

There are no black film composers doing the likes of Star Wars, doing the likes of E.T., doing the likes of Jurassic Park. There are none, nor will there ever be one. That ain't about to happen!

When the Domaine Musical started up, I wasn't part of it. They were the major players in contemporary music at that time, braodcasting old and new composers' work. And I wasn't one of them.

Composers, like authors, have a lot in common. Our main goal is to connect with the listener emotionally.

A characteristic of older folksongs, in most cases, is that we don't know their composers or authors. Older folksongs were written often with no commercial purpose in mind. They were passed down by word of mouth, from generation to generation.

I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.

America can well expect to develop a goodly amount of composers for she has a goodly number of people.

Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.

I was always drawn to Broadway musicals, and obviously composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter were writing music that I found wildly impressive.

Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.

Although technical discussions are interesting to composers, I suspect that the truly magical and spiritual powers of music arise from deeper levels of our psyche.

The structural thinking I use in the concert hall is unnecessary to most film projects, and most film composers make better use of the enormous range of pop and other materials and techniques required of them than I probably would, faced with the same challenge.

Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge, for it requires from its disciples, composers and performers alike, not only talent and enthusiasm, but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection.

Composers today get a TV script on Friday and have to record on Tuesday. It's just dreadful to impose on gifted talent and expect decent music under these conditions.

There's a higher place that I have no illusions about reaching. There's a sophistication and aesthetic about composers who only write only for the music's sake.

I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work - the best and the worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively little.

The Russian composers, especially, tricked the symphony orchestra into the kind of dynamic, rhythmic thing.

We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.

Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary.

The composers could no longer direct all performances in person, and so the responsibility of interpreting their works in the spirit in which they had been conceived was placed upon conductors.

Composers are not all good conductors.

Nobody can give a good performance unless the authors and composers have written a good part, a fact which is often overlooked.

It's amazing how fast generations lose sight of other generations. One of the first things the young composers who come to work with me say is that they want to write music people will like, instead of gaining their credentials by being rejected by the audience.