Of all the arts, music is the one communal art. It requires for its existence extensive cooperation and organization...Singing together the greatest choral music of all time is the surest way of developing in a community that sense of quality and reverence for beauty, which is the basis of a musical culture...Entertainment has its place in life just as candies and cocktails have, but health is not built on such a diet alone, nor culture exclusively on amusement.

No matter how consummate a work of art may seem, it is only an approximation of the original conception. It is the artist's consciousness of this discrepancy between his conception and the realization that assures his progress.

I have just begun a work in which an important part is given to a large chorus and with it I want to use several of your instruments - augmenting their range as in those I used for my Equatorial - especially in the high range.

Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor.

A man is culpable in the eyes of society when he escapes from the jurisdiction of its mediocrity.

I do not write experimental music. My experimenting is done before I make the music. Afterwards it is the listener who must experiment.

I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena.