My students frequently ask what their next project should be. My advice: immerse yourself in the music you love and you will find what you want to do; you will discover your next project.
Mozart wrote so many works in his thirty-five years that it would take a lifetime just to write out the notes. We literally do not know how he did it.
Most artists have experienced the creative block. We get stuck in our work. We beat our head against the wall: nothing. Sometimes, it is because we are trying something at the wrong time.
It is the element I miss in electronic music - no performance, no loving immersion. Maybe that is why I was never particularly drawn to electronic music.
It is obvious that anything a scientist discovers or invents is based on previous discoveries and inventions. The same applies to the arts.
In the nineteenth century the more grandiose word inspiration began to replace the word idea in the arts.
I don't dare postulate about science, but I know that it takes both emotion and intellect in order for art to happen.
Great music does not just make me feel good. It means something. It makes us understand. It makes us happy.
As I sit down and start to work, I often panic. I stare at the empty piece of music paper. How can I say that my piece will be ready for performance next January when I do not have a recipe for making it happen?
Anybody can put things together that belong together. to put things together that don't go together, and make it work, that takes genius like Mozart's. Yet he is presented in the play Amadeus as a kind of silly boy whom the gods loved.
Any creator owes a debt to past creation.
