When I was seventeen years old I took lessons from the marvellous pianist Fania Chapiro. I had to study a piece from Bartók's Microcosmos in which the left hand was notated in four flats and the right hand in four sharps, or vice versa. I didn't even notice the key signatures and practiced it with all the wrong notes. I thought it sounded fine and it cost me a huge effort to relearn the piece in its original, 'correct' version.I understood the music but it led to something new.

Later on I changed notes in other people's music on purpose -particularly highly respectable colleagues from the past. Improving on, and messing about with, the music of others is a good thing, because music is the domain of freedom and freedom should be abused whenever possible. That is why I strive for an uninhibited manner of composing. Not at all economical!

Life is not a dress rehearsal for some performance in the afterlife. Just write, systematically or not, at the piano, and mind your chord progressions. Double bar, next piece.

Copy? Why not. Repeat yourself? Also fine. Our brains are equipped with a wonderful capacity: the capacity to make mistakes. But I cannot copy or repeat my own work, somewhere along the line it goes awry. The pen takes on a will of its own, the notes slither about or they take unexpected turnings. I get myself into unintended situations. Hopefully this kind of estrangement will continue, because that is the best thing that could happen to music.

True innovation in art comes mainly by accident. It steals in unnoticed and only later appears to have been responsible for momentous results. Errors are therefore not only human, or even desirable for music. They are absolutely essential!

Martijn Padding (translation Jonathan Reeder)