What is stronger in us — passion or habit? Or are all the violent impulses, all the whirl of our desires and turbulent passions, only the consequence of our ardent age, and is it only through youth that they seem deep and shattering?
“People often ask me: ‘Can you hear what you write? Are you surprised by what you write?’ The thing that surprises me is never the sound — I’m not a sound composer, I don’t go for special effects like that — what surprises me is how the piece speaks, how it unfolds and tells its story. That’s always a surprise.”
Harrison Birtwhistle