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

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.

In the end it doesn't matter what you do.

My operas and my theatre works are very formal pieces.

The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.

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.

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.