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

My perspective on the academic world is very favorable. I did certain kinds of things that I could never have done otherwise.

I didn't want my music to be seen as examples of an electronic culture; I just wanted them to be thought of as pieces of music.

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.

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 was very fortunate to be at a wealthy institution. I do recognize the drawbacks and limitations of the academic world but it's basically the world I grew up in and there's no way in which I would have been able to survive in the so-called real world.

I don't think there's something that you have to 'get' with my music. It tends toward the dramatic side rather than the narrative.