If the music has a logic of its own - as I think my music has - an open-minded listener will apprehend and understand.

It's always a thrill for me to see new versions of my pieces on YouTube.

With a piece of classical music by Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, on first listening I'm referencing it with other pieces by them that I know. I think that most people do this - they listen to pieces through the filter of pieces they already know.

I came to what I think of as the critical problem: the aging process of a piece of music. I noticed in the '70s that pieces I wrote would sound great the first time I listened to them and then on repeated hearings they sounded older and older until what seemed exciting and vibrant on first listening became stale.

I came up in the '60s; that was a time when there was a revolution going on in music. Stravinsky had become a twelve-tone composer; even Aaron Copland was writing twelve-tone pieces at that time!

I had been creating music on tape that was to be listened to as a recording, rather than through performance.

I found myself recycling ideas and I saw that I had to invent reasons to compose a piece rather than start from some exciting idea.