I didn't entertain the idea that my music would ever become available in any of the ways that I had previously known music to be available.

Composition is interesting because, in a sense, you always have to let it go. Unless you're a true composer/performer, you're always sending a PDF and then someone else makes it. It's like instructions for a short story, faxed to every English student who's studying it.

The score is doing a lot of work. It's like Wagner. It's like a yak carrying people.

I didn't entertain the idea that my music would ever become available in any of the ways that I had previously known music to be available.

Riding a horse is a relationship with a foreign creature, and with musicians it's a similar thing: "OK, I'm going to put something on the page that will spook you into rushing." Little games you can play.

For me the best kind of film music is liturgical music. Liturgical music is essentially a million scores for the same film.

As a composer you want to tell musicians two completely contradictory things. You want to say, "Play exactly what I wrote, but bring your own thing to it." In a lot of ways they feel like opposites, but in a sense, my job is to cajole or encourage decisions that I approve of.