45 Quotes by Harrison Birtwistle

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.

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!

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.

I always write the pieces I want to write.

I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism.

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.

This sounds horribly pretentious, but I like to think that if music hadn't existed, I could have invented it.

When I was a kid, I wrote music - from the age of 11 until the age of 18.

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.