1. How and when did you get interested in composing?
I started to compose when I was thirteen years of age. (Since the age of nine I had been learning the piano.) My interest in composing grew as I composed, so in a sense it is composition itself that sparked off my subsequent involvement. For all that, I do not think that any of my compositions from that time will ever be resurrected for public consumption.
2. Is composing your 'day job' or do you do something else as well?
The idea of a 'day job' implies involvement in something quite different from artistic endeavour. However I have always been involved in teaching music at university level, so the teaching played into the composition and vice versa.
3. Where do you mostly get your ideas?
While I have been interested in most of the techniques of modern music and also in traditional Irish music the ideas themselves come mostly in the act of composing. It is not that different from writing a letter; you write something down, examine its content and impact, then perhaps improve it or rub it out. Behind this process lies a feeling of 'rightness' when the idea is ripe for use.
To use another analogy it is rather like riding a bicycle: you do not decide to lean exactly ten degrees to the right or seven degrees to the left. You develop a feeling for it by doing it. The direct experience is what leads you to develop a sense of balance. Composing is just like that.
4. What are you working on at the moment?
While there are some songs, an organ piece and a work for chamber ensemble in the offing, at present I have interrupted my composition for a while in order to experiment with another music-writing software programme: in this case Sibelius. I am very interested in being able to use this for formatting and printing some of my earlier avant-garde compositions. In many ways this is much slower and more difficult than writing the score out by hand, however the end result is very satisfactory and has a very strong visual impact. The first pages of my first String Quartet have come out very well indeed.
5. Describe your typical working day.
I have no 'typical day'. Each one is very different from its neighbours and although each one has its delights and difficulties no day is ever boring.
6. What is it like hearing a new piece played for the first time?
That depends on the performance! Assuming that the performance is good, hearing a new piece for the first time usually is a satisfying experience. (In general I have always tried to work out the music carefully in advance so that major re-writing is not required.)
7. What has been the highlight of your career so far?
The highlight of my career is always the next piece I am about to write. (I am not much given to nostalgia, which, as is often remarked, is not at all what it used to be...)
8. What has been the lowlight of your career so far?
Offhand I am unable to think of any composing experience that did not have a positive musical aspect to it. Not that I am equally satisfied with everything that I have done but rather that nothing came out so badly that I regretted doing it at all.
9. What is your greatest ambition?
To live long enough to hear people say: 'Where does a hundred-and-fifty year old man find the energy to do so much? ...and have you heard the latest about him learning the tango and dancing in a tango club in Buenos Aires?'
10. Which musician in history do you most admire and why?
Probably Mozart. There is a sense of great humanity about his music. It encompasses the positive and the negative in life yet remains in the last analysis fundamentally appreciative of the experience of being human. (Handel in his operas has a very similar quality, although the music is so very different.)
11. Which present-day musician do you most admire and why?
I admire all those who, often against the odds, follow seriously the art of musical composition. All new music interests me. While obviously I admire many of the well-known composers of the present day I should be loth to single one out as one 'I most admire'. Probably I am a bit too old for role-models. Fundamentally it is the music that interests me. There are composers who have written only a few really fine works and I should hate to have to write them off.
12. Which period of history would you most like to have lived in and why?
Somewhere in the earlier part of the twentieth century, either before the First World War or in the decade or so after it. One thinks of all the artistic experimentation of the time and how interesting it would have been to have lived through it.
13. What is the best thing about being a composer?
Composing.
14. What is the worst thing about being a composer?
Not composing.
15. If you weren't a composer, what other career might you have chosen?
Before I started to compose I was greatly interested in the theatre and indeed studied acting in an acting school for a while, read Stanislavsky and everything that I could get hold of regarding the technique of acting. Perhaps being a playwright would have been a possibility -- certainly something in the arts.
16. What is your concept of heaven?
Awareness of the nature of reality to such an extent that I should never be unaware that heaven is always here and now.
17. What is your concept of hell?
A dusty room at the bottom of a broken-down staircase that leads nowhere.
18. What is your favourite food?
Really interesting vegetarian dishes. (Alternative: whole-wheat bread and really good jam!)
19. If someone gave you three months off with unlimited travel and living expenses, what would you do?
Go back and revisit Japan, see more of those wonderful Zen gardens in Kyoto. Maybe learn Japanese...
20. If you could have one thing in the world that would really help you as a composer, what would it be?
Most likely a brain transplant!
