Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

In writing music, the structure of each piece is a very important factor.

I'm really interested in writing a piece of music that will move you, that will really move you. That is really the only reason that I'm writing music.

There are some people, by the way, that associate a certain amount of visualization with the performance of music. Those are people that really are not centrally concerned only with music, the traditional things.

Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.

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.