John Corigliano Quotes
The French Revolution is the ultimate modernist statement. Destroy everything. Don't build on the past. There is no past.
Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.
What I think of as style - and I've gotten to this over years of really thinking about it - is that style is the unconscious choices I make.
You become a great composer when you win a Pulitzer. But I think that now it's a completely meaningless award.
I find respect for a mediocre British composer, as opposed to a really good American, ridiculous because they automatically respect a composer if he's from England.
I'm glad I won it because when I grew up the Pulitzer was the award that every composer wanted and I was like that too.
I think it's good for the composer to teach because you always have new students and you have to begin at the beginning and make things clear.
Eighty percent of my pieces gravitate towards an A, as a tonal thing, not at the beginning, but somewhere in it.
