ABSTRACT
To what extent do you still feel your pieces are experiments in the sense that the activities and the compositions that result from that are a means of testing something?
Many of my new pieces are not really experimental because I am making them for instrumentalists. I’m making pieces that explore acoustic phenomena but not in the way that the early electronic pieces did. My early electronic works lent themselves to that description because I used test oscillators and test equipment, but when you use a clarinet, a viola or a violin, then you’re more in the realm of sound producing objects that already have well known acoustical properties. I usually respond when somebody asks me to make them a piece. I accept the offer if I get a good idea but it’s not so much a test or an exploration as making a piece that works as chamber music.
