Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.

This symmetrical composition- the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end- may seem quite 'novelistic' to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as 'fictive,' 'fabricated,' and 'untrue to life' into the word 'novelistic.' Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion. They are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence (Beethoven's music, death under a train), into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life... Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress... The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful.

The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only 'good guys' in it, or eating cottage cheese.

The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consistent and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only "good guys" in it, or eating cottage cheese.

I tend to write in patterned arrangement with rhymes.. I try to secure an effect of flowing continuity and the correspondence between verse and music.

I propose to create an heroic, monumental style of composition simple enough to inspire all people, completely free from fads, artificial mannerisms and false sophistications, direct, forceful, sincere, always original but never unnatural. Music must be freed from decadence and stagnation. There has been too much emphasis on small things while the great truths have been overlooked. The superficial must be dispensed with. Music must become virile to express big things. It is not my purpose to supply a few pseudo intellectual musicians and critics with more food for brilliant argumentation, but rather to inspire all mankind with new heroism and spiritual nobility. This may appear to be sentimental and impossible to some, but it must be remembered that Palestrina, Handel, and Beethoven would not consider it either sentimental or impossible. In fact, the worthiest creative art has been motivated consciously or unconsciously by the desire for the regeneration of mankind.

And of course, in my writing, there is the constant theme of music, love of, preoccupation with, music. Music is the single thread making my life into a coherency. ... It's my job and my vice mixed together. You can't hope for better than that: having your job and your sin commingled.

Now, I should like to say something else to you about the connection with music, primarily that of Bach, i.e. the Fugue or, put more simply, the canon.. .It has a great deal in common with my own motifs, which I make turn on various axes too. Nowadays I have such a powerful sense of relationship, of affinity, that when I am listening to Bach I frequently get inspired and feel an overwhelming instinct for his insistent rhythm, a cadence seeking something of the infinite. In the Fugue everything is based on a single motif, often consisting of just a few notes. In my work, too, everything revolves around a single closed contour..

Consistency is the key to achieving and maintaining momentum.

1. Sometimes music is needed.
2. Sometimes silence.
3. A novel, like all written things, is a piece of music, the language demanding you make a sound as you read it. Writing one, then, is like remembering a song you've never heard before.

The bases of music are rhythm and harmony. Rhythm is ordered recurrence in time... As the planets move around the sun, they repeat their orbits periodically; thus there is already a primitive kind of rhythm in their motion. ...Harmony ...can be considered a special kind of rhythm. ...pure musical tones are produced when the vibrations are... periodic or... repeat themselves regularly in time. Two tones harmonize if their intervals of repetition are in rhythm—or, in mathematical language, if their periods are in proportion. Kepler... in the third book of Harmonice mundi... attempted to make other... related, connections between musical harmony and mathematical proportion.

A good story works like a musical composition. An idea is presented, elaborated, debated and perhaps defeated, and finally, presented to the reader in a modified, more mature form that embodies the path that was traveled in order to reach that idea. By taking the reader on a journey, we, to a certain extent, can re-create in their experience the thought processes and emotions of our characters. This should be done with compassion, humor, and generosity. But again like music, we can provide a pattern, a symmetry and closure that one seldom encounters in life. That is why reading good writing is pleasurable and fulfilling. That is why listening to good music can induce ecstasy.

Music's exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.

My natural tendency is to write dramatic music, but the job of a composer is to write whatever a show requires. The range is indeed quite broad, as you know, and in truth, each and every style has a unique set of challenges and rewards. It is not unusual for me to go from a very dark and dramatic scene to a lighthearted one. And my one comment would be that the difficulty lies in shifting gears! But shift we must, and we composers do it every day.