But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.

I think recordings have been a terrific advance because now, when you have a piece of music, particularly something that appears to the listener very complicated, there's really a push to the world to try to figure out what it was that he was hearing.

By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There’s no specific line, as you know.

By the visual pattern, but mostly I'm guided entirely by my ear, what I hear.

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

Now, what we are not talking about, what you're really coming to, is what compromises one makes so that the listener understands somewhat of what you're doing, what you're trying to express.

Now, there are sometimes making a connection between one section and another that sometimes you do want to see the pattern because it helps you to lead into the next thing - it's a rhetorical thing, where you just see how the pattern has to go into the next thing.