As I had collaborated with visual artists before whether on installations, on performance pieces, in the context of theatre works and as I had taught for a time in art colleges the idea of writing music in response to painting was not alien.
Somehow in the 20th Century an idea has developed that music is an activity or skill which is not comprehensible to the man in the street. This is an arrogant assertion and not necessarily a true one.
Similarly you can make a transition from one set of instruments to another imperceptibly.
I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.
The academic area of new music or modern music festivals is not something which attracts me at all.
I currently spend a lot of time thinking about orchestration and every detail of a piece.
Like an apparently strict musical form it breaks the five minute whole into its structural parts - a descriptive preamble, the action of taking the cards, the development of the cards' manipulation and the revelation of what has been achieved.
I have friends who have a CD mastering plant in Hollywood and they are very sceptical about European record labels' understanding of digital technology.
It's rather like attending a university seminar where you are talking to a few gifted specialists who deliver a paper to an audience of their peers. That's one way of making music.
Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.
I've heard though that there is a younger generation of tonal French composers who are reacting with vigour.
I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.
