SELDOM ASKED
QUESTIONS
ABOUT THIS OBSCURE COMPOSER
- Q1. Are you as good-looking as your picture?
- A1. No. All is vanity!
- Q2. What is your favorite dessert?
- A2. Rhubarb pie à la mode.
- Q3. Where did you learn to compose like you do?
- A3. My teachers have entered the federal protection program to preserve their anonymity. Actually, I blame it on my mother. When I got upset as a child, my mother used to say, "Compose yourself." So I did. I lost my composure once for two hours and wrote no music at all during that time.
- Q4. Do you think your music may improve in the future?
- A4. I think the pieces I have written will sound about the same tomorrow as they do today.
- Q5. Were you a child prodigy?
- A5. I played the radio at the age of 5 years.
- Q6. What instruments do you play?
- A6. The piano, organ, harpsichord, clavichord, clavecin, clavicembalo, clavicytherium, claviorganum, clavicle, and metronome. But only one at a time.
- Q7. What do you think of Stephen Hawking's suggestion that "space and time together might form a finite, four-dimensional space without singularities or boundaries," and that this "has profound implications for the role of God as Creator" (A Brief History of Time, 1988)?
- A7. I am not too impressed with Professor Hawking's book. It never even mentions 3/4 or 4/4 time. Just let him try to explain 7/8 time with quantum mechanics!
- Q8. What do you think is the most important subject for musical composition?
- A8. Love.
- Q9. What is the most basic score in tennis?
- A9. Love.
- Q10. Do you have any plans to write a musical about tennis?
- A10. No.
- Q11. Too many musicals already on this subject?
- A11. Yes, it's a racket. Too many Baroque and classical composers were employed at court.
- Q12. Why are these questions seldom asked?
- A12. I have no idea.