Aaron Copland was a man that had a very specific point of view about what music should be which was that, he felt that new music should have the composer should show a personality in his music.
After I left in 1935 I thought I would never want to go back to Paris, it was so sad. I began to change my mind after a while.
Almost every one of my various zero numbered birthdays has had a big concert in London and often in Paris.
As I say I was a friend with Charles Ives, and Henry Cowell, and I knew Aaron right up to the very end of his life.
Even I wrote it when I first started to compose after I left Paris. I wrote pieces that were comparatively accessible and easy to understand.
I mean the public likes it more in Europe than they do here because the state supported organizations have felt that playing contemporary music was part of the education of the public.
I went to the Boston Symphony concerts I think for the entire six years I was at Harvard, both at undergraduate and graduate.
I wrote that Holiday Overture which was supposed to be the rejoicing of Paris over the liberation, and while I was writing that Aaron Copland came and was writing Appalachian Spring on our dining room table.
I've known those pieces ever since I was about 16 or 17; I also at that time was taken to meet Charles Ives whom I got to know fairly well. He was the one who wrote a recommendation for me to get into college.
In any case, Ives encouraged me to go into music even though he himself had such a hard time being a composer.
It was only later on that I became more interested in older music.
My cello sonata in 1948 was also a disaster in terms of everybody hated it. I couldn't get it published. Now it's taught in most universities and it's played all the time.
My musical life started with hearing and being fascinated by contemporary music.
Now let me say that since you're asking about this, there has been of course ever since the beginning of the modern movement, ever since I've been involved with it, there has always been quite a strong feeling against a certain group of people who didn't want to hear that kind of thing.
Right at the end of the war I wrote a piano sonata, which was written at a time when Sam Barber used to come down here and we used to have lunch together in a very nice old hotel that's now not there.
Silences between movements are employed only in order to bring the opposing duo to the fore.
Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.
Talking about a materialistic thing, I get about 13 times more royalties from Europe than I do from America.
That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.
The BBC was run by a man for many years called William Glock who insisted on playing contemporary music all the time.
The first thing that struck me about contemporary music in general had been that there was not much interest in rhythm.
The idea of counterpoint for instance is something that has invaded my music and very few people to date can write counterpoint.
The Quartets have been a major part of my work.
The Royal Festival Hall, I don't know whether it was 80 or 70, gave a whole festival of my music there with orchestra and everything. String quartets.
The Third Quartet I made the instruments in pairs - Two different pairs - Violin and viola, and violin and cello. They played very different things from each other all through the whole piece.
Then, when the Depression came, all of this changed completely. Since that time, the entire public is of a very different sort and there was not so much support for contemporary music in a direct way.
These wealthy people were very interested in contemporary music. They wanted to help diffuse it and get it to be known to other people.
Well I tried to, but I could never write anything that I liked or was worthwhile. I threw it all out and realized that I had to make a serious study- that my tastes were far more advanced than my abilities.
Well the rhythmic things I developed in that were more extreme actually, than almost any work I've written since.
Well when I was young, when I was very young, when I was a little boy I don't remember the music I heard, but there was an article in the Brooklyn Daily written by my Aunt about how I could choose phonograph records.
When I was in Paris, all of the German refugees began to flow in and it was a very sad time.
Why write for the orchestra? For one thing it's a very challenging problem.
Yes, I get a report from BMI about the frequency of performances, and it is very surprising. They played one of my most advanced pieces, and one of my most unusual ones on the radio.
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