Top 28 Quotes by Harrison Birtwistle

People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me.

My operas and my theatre works are very formal pieces.

The theatre only knows what it's doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: What are we going to do in five years' time? A completely different attitude.

When I was confronted with official tuition, the academic thing, I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11.

Minimalism now is a reaction to what came before. It's absolutely of its time. Music moved into the set theory thing, and moved out of it.

I don't think there is much American music.

The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.

You either are or you're not.

The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles.

My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.