Nicholas Snowman

Has [music] always been the case since you were very small?

I've always been very, very fascinated by music. My parents don't play instruments, but I was always encouraged to go to concerts and exhibitions, and music was very much part of our life.

Why did you not read music at Cambridge?

First of all, I wouldn't have been qualified to read music, not having studied it in in a serious manner up to that time. I've always considered myself to be a music lover, not a professional of the music business in in the sense of analysis and playing instruments at a professional level. And I've always been very interested in literature, and that seemed the the obvious thing to do.

When did your fondness for contemporary music begin?

I remember very well at Cambridge feeling an enormous sadness at the idea that music somehow doesn't exist any more. This can't be possible. … It can't be possible because there's painting, there's literature, there's everything else, there's cinema, everything else goes on. Surely music can't just be a wonderful museum with no extra gallery, no extra room, no continuity. And at Cambridge I was very conscious of the the need that traditions change and I was immensely impressed by the new music which was coming out of the continent as well as in Britain. Stockhous and Boulas. Co in particular. … But also the works of composers then very young, like Maxwell Davis, Bertwistle, and Alexander Goh. And just, as I say, this feeling that life goes on and that the refusal to face an intolerable idea that music is archaeology, that it's finished with Richard Strauss, wonderful though that is.