So many of the sounds that contemporary composers were trying to create were to be found in the traditional musics of the world. That was encouraging but also little daunting to think that you had to work so hard to be new and yet it was old.

I never presumed that a technique of composition or an idea was so special that just using it would guarantee the quality of the music.

Well, I don’t know any piece by heart, but Mozart goes something like this… What do you think?

I do remember, though, when I discovered the third! I was about five years old – it was a very pleasing sound. I remembered that if I hit one note, then skipped one and played the next, I could get this really good sound.

So many of the sounds that contemporary composers were trying to create were to be found in the traditional musics of the world. That was encouraging but also little daunting to think that you had to work so hard to be new and yet it was old.