Eric Whitacre Music Quotations

With vocal and choral music, first and foremost, it's the text. Not only do I need to serve the text, but the text - when I'm doing it right - acts as the perfect 'blueprint', and all the architecture is there. The poet has done the heavy lifting, so my job is to find the soul of the poem and then somehow translate that into music.

When you look back on music history, it falls into these neat periods, but of course, the period you yourself are living through seems totally scattered and chaotic.

I write music that sounds complex but isn't. I frankly never think in terms of theory.

I truly thought I was going to be in pop music. And then I joined a choir to meet girls, and everything changed in the first rehearsal.

As a composer, I know that all sorts of sounds I hear are making their way into my brain and soul and later sneak into my music.

A really good poem is full of music.

Many composers use software to write music - programs like Finale or Sibelius. There are also recording programs. I should say I'm still very old-fashioned, I still use pencil and paper. But almost every composer I know does it the 'new way.'

I can't write music unless I'm deeply connected to it and that connection almost always comes from some experience that I have had or am having.

The virtual choir would never replace live music or a real choir, but the same sort of focus and intent and esprit de corps is evident in both, and at the end of the day it seems to me a genuine artistic expression.

I'm a self-confessed geek, and my whole concept of music at first was entirely electronic. In many ways, it turned out to be an advantage. I was so green, so utterly naive about the nature of classical music, that I did things that made me look totally, deliberately unorthodox.

Since I first fell in love with choral music when I was 18 and began composing at 21, I've been listening to these recordings of British choirs. I just fell in love with that sound - that pure, clean, pristine sound - and I think it's probably been the biggest influence on my sound.