My intention here is to make it clear that not a single cell of my composition, here in regard to The Raven, is found by chance or intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precision and inevitability of a mathematical equation.
I begin by considering an effect.
Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.
The only love affair I have ever had was with music.
I do not ask for my music to be interpreted, but only for it to be played.
Remember that I wrote a pavane for a dead princess, and not a dead pavane for a princess!