Quotes On Music

From an interview in Keyboard Magazine, Winter 1985

…if you want to change the behavior, you have to change the structure.

In the old method of composing, you specify the result you want, and then you present a number of exact instructions to get there. The [Cornelius] Cardew piece [“Paragraph 7” from The Great Learning: a score with no notations, only a few instructions] is radical because he doesn’t do all that, and yet it happens. The behavior remains governed. Political systems are all doing what the old composers were doing. y a system of laws and constrainments, they attempt to specify behavior… They’re trying to govern a highly complex system by rote. And you don’t need to do that. Instead of trying to specify what you want in full detail, you only specify somewhat; then you ride on the dynamics of the system in the direction you want to go. There are certain organic regulators; you don’t have to come up with them, you just have to let them operate. (p.9)