It’s really the sound of the voices, the sound of the words, the sound of the sound that we’re interested in.

There’s a great difference between having 20 in an orchestra and having 70 in an orchestra. Seventy is a big sound, a symphony orchestra sort of size, and 20 is a lot more intimate, and...

I prefer to see a rough cut of the film rather than read a script. I find it difficult to get the feeling of the atmosphere of a film from a script.

The Art of Noise was in this suspended animation. We never really went away. But I think it was quite an ecologically sound move not to release anything for about nine years, because there’s far...

I wanted to make a classical piece that was actually designed to be a CD, not designed for performance.

It was only ironically by being in the Art of Noise that people started being interested in me to do film scores.

I think that music has an endless life.

What we devised for The Full Monty was a little sort of odd band full of slightly unusual instruments that you wouldn’t normally put together, like a harmonica and an acoustic guitar and a baritone...

I think the thing about being a film composer is that you have to be pretty eclectic-be able to turn your hand to all sorts of different styles and genres and be familiar with the...

We all shared an admiration of Debussy both as a musician and as sort of an icon for the 20th century. It seemed like an interesting idea to go right back 100 years to find...

You know, nobody eats in England. Three or four pints of English beer a night fills you. I can’t say I’m very impressed with the food in America. it’s all sort of bland. Like turkey...

I wanted to do something that had a purely musical inspiration, and I was inspired by the sound of choirs and the English pastoral music I used to hear when growing up. I was also...

Composers are always going back to the past.

Sometimes in films it’s nice to have violins on either side, rather than on one side, so you’ve got more of a stereo picture with the violins. Sometimes it’s good to have the basses in...

My favorite work is The Full Monty because I got an Oscar for it. But it was really hard work at the time. Sometimes comedy is not a bundle of laughs to actually do.

I’m very interested in the color of sound. And I’m very interested in the juxtaposition of different things, ethnic instruments juxtaposed with symphonic instruments, and I’m interested in the ancient and the modern. I don’t...

The greatest thing you can have when you compose a film score is a bit of time to think before you have to charge straight in and do it.

I think being studio-literate helps, because obviously I’m not intimidated by the studio, and I never have been. I’ve always thought it was another part of the creative process.

I had actually always wanted to be a film composer, but when I was at college there didn’t seem to be any easy route into it-or any route into it at all. I found myself...

I like to start at the beginning and make the music develop in line with the drama developing. I’ve talked to other composers about this, and they don’t all do it this way. Some people...

Obviously in Art of Noise, I’m just part of the group, and when I do film scores, it’s always in collaboration with the director and other people involved.

Usually one or two things happen: Either you have an idea straightaway-the sort of sound that you want or the instrumentation or one particular sound that you want to feature-or you don’t.

Film scores are often based on short themes, and it helps if you’ve got some way of developing these themes and making them sometimes last 4 minutes and sometimes last 40 seconds. One ends up...

I always think it’s important to choose your initial theme very carefully because you’re going to be married to it for a long time. You might have to generate an hour’s worth of music from...