“Most people have music in the center of their lives. I believe my work sheds light on how music affects us and why it is so influential.”

Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812.

Context: The fact that so many books still name the Beatles "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success: the Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worth of being saved.

"The Decline of Academic Freedom at Dartmouth College", 20 October 2005.
Letter published in "Appleton Leaves Dartmouth", 2005

James Harrington in American Record Guide ARG, USA, issue November/December 2010, Volume 73, Number 6, p. 107

"Chasing the Sun"
Lyrics, The Blessed Unrest (2013)

Source: The Life Energy in Music, Vol. 1 (1981), p. 105

What Is A Jazz Composer? (1971)
Context: Let my children have music! Let them hear live music. Not noise. My children! You do what you want with your own!

The Telegraph interview (2005)