Steve Reich Quotes
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All music does come from a time and place. I was born and raised in New York. I moved out of New York, but it's inside of me and it will be inside of me until they put me in a box in the ground.
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As a matter of fact, I personally would much rather hear Perotin than Mozart.
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I've learned over the years that geography is not that important, except that I seem to work better in the country than the city. I get more done. There's just less happening around me, and I have more time and concentration to work on music.
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It's very important for any artist, in any field, to take their own temperature and check out their own energy, and see what it is they ought to be doing to keep the energy up. Because if your energy is not up, you're going to come up with some really dreary piece of work that no one's going to enjoy.
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All great music is contemporary. If it's still alive and kicking, then it's contemporary. If it fades away, it was a period piece. It had its moment, and that was it.
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I discovered that the most interesting music of all was made by simply lining the loops in unison, and letting them slowly shift out of phase with other.
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I write music, and I want people to listen to it and care about it and have it make some difference in their lives. When I'm fortunate for that to happen, then of course I feel very, very good about it.
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In the pop world, instead of saying I want to get an album by such and such a group, it's I like this particular tune and that one I like less. I think it's much better to get involved with an artist instead of riding up and down the works you like and disregard the works you don't like.
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In serial music, the series itself is seldom audible... What I'm interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one in the same thing.
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I'm not making any absurd comparisons between myself and Bach, but I aspire to that, that my music will have the legs to survive whatever context it finds itself in.