David Lang

Is that difficult?

I wouldn't say I'm making it for eternity, but there is something of the way we think about classical music and my background.

I'm a completely nerdy classical musician.

I'm a college professor.

A lot of what I do is talk about music which is sometimes a thousand years old.

And so our idea of what we're talking about in music we are writing now is that it is somehow in connection with the discipline as it goes back to its origins.

So we talk about Beethoven, we talk about Mozart, we talk about Haydn.

These people are still fresh to us, right?

We're still getting lessons from them.

I think that makes us weird.

I know it makes you weird.

There's something kind of a little necrophilic about classical music.

But there's something also really relaxing about thinking that your timeframe is larger than my thing has to be a dance hit this month.

And by next month, I don't care if anyone will listen to it again.

It's got to make all of its sales and all of its impact and all of its airplay.

All the people who are going to make out to it have to make out to it this week.

We don't have that pressure.

You're saying that Wealth of Nations is make-out music?

Everyone has the music, so I'm hoping that everyone has looked at their music.

But I have not communicated with anyone, not even the choral conductor.