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It's wonderful when music is intellectually stimulating. But ultimately it has to be a visceral experience.

But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.

The nature of music is mysterious and so much so that it generates strong emotions within us. It moves along passages that reach the most intimate areas of our psyche without being tried by prejudices or influences of any kind.

Being able to take musical ideas through every iteration is attractive to me. Granted, not everyone's going to want to listen to that, but it should exist.

So basically, I think music at its best can be everything. It can be totally stupid and very intellectual and emotional at the same time. I don't think all those things shut each other out.

Music is really nothing if you think about it - it only becomes something when somebody listens to it. And then it becomes uncontrollable.

To me, there's two kinds of music these days. There's ephemeral music, and there's music that has lasting power and depth.

Although technical discussions are interesting to composers, I suspect that the truly magical and spiritual powers of music arise from deeper levels of our psyche.