One thing I am certain of is that, if I have done anything good in music, it was, first, because of my father, and second, because of my wife

There can be nothing exclusive about substantial art. It comes directly out of the heart of the experience of life and thinking about life and living life.

One thing I am certain of is that, if I have done anything good in music, it was, first, because of my father, and second, because of my wife

The possibilities of percussion sounds, I believe, have never been fully realized

You cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance.

Please don't try to make things nice! All the wrong notes are right. Just copy as I have -- I want it that way.

In some century to come, when the school children will whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones--when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic is now--perhaps then these borderland experiences may be both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense