The Sound of Music was just such an honour to be in, because it was a movie that appeals to so many people, and they just loved it so much and they still love it to this day.
Well when I was young, when I was very young, when I was a little boy I don't remember the music I heard, but there was an article in the Brooklyn Daily written by my Aunt about how I could choose phonograph records.
That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.
Then, when the Depression came, all of this changed completely. Since that time, the entire public is of a very different sort and there was not so much support for contemporary music in a direct way.
Aaron Copland was a man that had a very specific point of view about what music should be which was that, he felt that new music should have the composer should show a personality in his music.
I mean the public likes it more in Europe than they do here because the state supported organizations have felt that playing contemporary music was part of the education of the public.
My entire life has really revolved around music that was written about the time that I was born, 1908, to just before the First World War and shortly after it. This music I've always known, and it is that music that's most important to me.
Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.
My relationship with Music Row has always been, from my end, optimistic and hopeful that there is more than one way to approach the writing, recording, and marketing of an album.
