Words matter. These are the best Max Richter Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
When I was a kid, there were really only two possible futures in the foreground, which were Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’.
There’s different ways to approach music for sleeping. Things like white noise are functional, like a lullaby. This is more like an inquiry, a question about how music and sleep fit together.
I don’t have synesthesia, but I think when music is really intense, it’s almost like it’s more than just hearing. If you’re at a gig, and there’s just something amazing going on, it’s not really just hearing: it’s more of a total body sense, isn’t it? You get transported, and all your senses kind of join up.
I came from a Conservatoire background where the idea of complexity was very much bound up with good music – good music was seen as complex and difficult to understand.
Traditional methods for falling asleep work. Non-taxing, repetitive mental tasks have a lulling effect, and I built those patterns into ‘Sleep’.
I can’t usually sleep if I’m listening to music. It seems to fire up my mind, and I keep engaging with it to see what it’s doing.
If somebody says, ‘Well, what are your favorite composers?’ really, what they are saying is, ‘What are your favorite composers apart from Bach?’ Because obviously, Bach is your favorite composer if you are involved in music at all.
It’s a liminal thing, humming, And I’m always interested in liminal things.
We tend to think that when we’re awake, we’re on, and when we’re sleeping our mind is off, but actually, we’re not off. There’s a lot going on!
‘Spring One’ probably has only four bars of Vivaldi in it, but it feels like it’s all Vivaldi. It’s odd. It’s a bit like walking around a sculpture, you just sort of see it from a different angle.
That childhood passion and involvement and being really submerged in something, that’s the kind of state I’m looking for all the time – and preserving that sense of magical possibility and wonder that children have. I think, for artists, if you can stay connected to that, then you are in a good place.
When I was a student, if you accidentally wrote a triad in a piece of yours, it was just sort of like you were breaking the law! You just couldn’t do it. And that just meant you were a bad composer.
It feels like when novelists say they find their characters are doing things they never thought they’d do, the material comes alive, and that’s how I feel making music.
I was living in a suburban town north of London, dutifully practicing my Mozart sonatas. And the milkman who delivered the milk in the mornings was kind of milkman by day, composer-artist by night.
The thing that makes me want to write a piece of music is having something to talk about, you know? Something I want to get across. Because I’m a composer, music is my first language, and that’s what I reach for when I want to convey something.
I just really try to stay focused on what the material is wanting to do. My basic assumption is that no one will ever listen to it anyway. It’s fidelity to the material. That’s my contract: It’s me and the material. And if it connects with other people, I’m thrilled.
Sleep is probably my favorite activity. I wrote this piece out of gratitude that I’m able to sleep well as an offering to people who don’t.
When you make a piece, one of the interesting things is hearing what other people think about it.
When I’m working with pictures, with images and storytelling, it’s really about the sentiment and the emotional trajectory of the characters. That’s really where the music lives, I think. That’s what I’m focused on; that’s what I respond to most strongly.
All music is just a collision of sounds until you know its internal conventions and understand the nuances. It’s a question of familiarity.
I assumed no one would ever listen to my music, and for quite a lot of years, I was right.
‘Black Mirror’ obviously has its own universe, with a very strong fingerprint and strong themes, and I was intrigued on reading. It’s such a powerful piece of storytelling.