“For many years, I took the attitude, and would counsel composers in general, to just go forward,” he said during a recent phone interview. Focus on writing the next work to be written; the aggregate will take care of itself.
About five years ago, though, Harbison, who turned 80 at the end of last year, began an inventory of his own large body of work. It was prompted, he said, less by a curiosity about his own journey than about classical music — “concert music,” as he referred to it — more generally. Read the Full Article