Harrison Birtwistle Quotes

My whole life, I've been watching conductors. I was 7 the first time I played with a conductor. Seeing the ones that do it well, it's an amazing thing.

I like classical music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and I adore Bach above all.

Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti.

When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer.

If you want to find the source of much of the music of modern day Russia, you will find it in the incredible compositions of that crazed lunatic Berlioz.

I work to Glenn Gould in the morning and go to sleep listening to Parsifal.

I was just going more for what I've always been influenced by, European music.

Shostakovich was one of the great symphonists of all time, and maybe the last great symphonist.

Mendelssohn never wrote any Water Music. However, he wrote the Scotch Symphony, which is even better, or at least stronger.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

A lot of people don't know that Beethoven, when he wrote the Fifth Symphony, that second movement, he took eight years to figure that out!

I watch Renee Fleming a lot. I listen to Renee Fleming a lot. She was like my built-in master class.

If anything, when I was young, I wanted to be an orchestra.

Hearing about a visual artist's approach can change the way you think about songwriting.

I've got that Beethoven energy, that Stravinsky energy. And it's all a gift from the Creator.

I want to take the great tradition of the orchestra within me, to take what the orchestra offers.

I feel like there are things that inspire the music, and then there's the music itself. I don't feel like I always need to force them together.

I'm a big Beethoven fan, and you'll struggle to find a three-minute song on any of his stuff.

My education as a film composer, you can't not - if you like the orchestra like I do, if you are a symphonist like I am - you can't not listen to John Williams' work.

I first heard Mahler's second symphony aged 11 in Liverpool, and it inspired me to become a conductor.

My grandmother got me recordings of the 'Goldberg Variations,' in addition to the 'Brandenburg Concertos,' the Mozart string quartets and Beethoven's 'Seventh Symphony.'

I was always into classical music and opera because I played the piano as I went through school and was very interested in Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals and stuff like that. That changed into heavy metal at around the age of 14 or 13, and I dropped the piano and started to play the guitar.

I'm everything I'm made of. So a part of me is made of classical music. I'm grateful for it.

I'm too busy playing. When I'm playing I don't pay attention to who's listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don't listen to one instrument; you listen to music.

I've always been heavily influenced by classical music, mostly by baroque music.