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As a composer I am indebted to my teacher Alfred Uhl especially as regards the mastery of the orchestra pallet. Alban Berg, Strawinsky and Bartók were especially influential as role models. The analyses of works from the Classical symphonic literature imparted by Swarowsky taught me about the need to think and write in workable structures. My music is always fundamentally tone-oriented, also if I use twelve-tone rows and their manifestations as building blocks, so to speak, though not as a world view; in reverse motion, backward movement and reverse motion of the backward movement. I occasionally also work with scales which are composed of two similarly built tetrachords. I enjoy using baroque structures (mirror form, for example), and I also like to use style elements from the middle ages (isorhythmics). I use common notation. I do not shy away from using pure tonality for the purpose of expression if necessary (in my "Four London Songs", for example).
Wolfgang Gabriel, 1994