Gavin Bryars Quotations

Like an apparently strict musical form it breaks the five minute whole into its structural parts - a descriptive preamble, the action of taking the cards, the development of the cards' manipulation and the revelation of what has been achieved.

The academic area of new music or modern music festivals is not something which attracts me at all.

Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years.

It's rather like attending a university seminar where you are talking to a few gifted specialists who deliver a paper to an audience of their peers. That's one way of making music.

What was once underground is now coming to the surface.

I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.

There's another way of making music, by touching the lives and feelings of ordinary people.

I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.

As I had collaborated with visual artists before whether on installations, on performance pieces, in the context of theatre works and as I had taught for a time in art colleges the idea of writing music in response to painting was not alien.

It makes sense to invest in new work. It's almost like having a research department in a scientific laboratory. You have to try things out. You'll make some bad mistakes. Some things will fail but at least you'll energise the organisation.

Similarly you can make a transition from one set of instruments to another imperceptibly.

The project which we developed, however, was for a sound piece and I was initially curious that a sculptor should be interested in working with a musician, especially on a project for radio.

I currently spend a lot of time thinking about orchestration and every detail of a piece.

I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.

I work very fast, keeping the ideas flowing but making sure they come out the way I intended.

I've heard though that there is a younger generation of tonal French composers who are reacting with vigour.

One thing I'm doing on the new Titanic recording is actually bringing in different acoustic spaces.

Over the years I have tried to develop something which is technically assured.

People like Arvo Part would not have been taken seriously 20 years ago.

Still, American composers working in France have had a pretty hard time.

Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.

I have friends who have a CD mastering plant in Hollywood and they are very sceptical about European record labels' understanding of digital technology.

Somehow in the 20th Century an idea has developed that music is an activity or skill which is not comprehensible to the man in the street. This is an arrogant assertion and not necessarily a true one.

When Philip Glass asked me if I would be interested in doing a new recording of Jesus' Blood he assumed that I would do something similar to the first version and wanted to know what other pieces would be on the same CD.

Philips did stipulate that Julian and I had to iron out our relationship. I had to could come up with something we would both be happy with.

I would also like the soloist to feel happy to put it in front of the public, because in the end he's on the firing line, not me.

I did that as a personal journey when I was a philosophy student and working as a jazz musician, so I moved from philosphy to music.

My thinking in this was as follows: in all the versions I had made everything that is played serves to accompany and support the old man's voice.

The transition from one form of percussion to another and the ways in which it's possible to blur those distinctions is quite interesting.

As much as mixing instruments, I'm also mixing acoustic space so the music will travel through some different sorts of environments.

The ideal, of course, is to have the respect of professionals and the admiration of amateurs. I suppose this was the case in the past.

Craft is part of the creative process.

The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically.