What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.

Music's exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.

Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.

It is the transcendent (or 'abstract' or 'self-contained') nature of music that the new so called concretism--Pop Art, eighteen-hour slices-of-reality films, musique concrete--opposes. But instead of bringing art and reality closer together, the new movement merely thins out the distinction.

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.