JOURNALIST:
After having rejected the avant-garde, your compositions started to reflect
the described musical and human knowledge, and you decided to introduce
the musical change of direction towards naturalness to the music lovers.
You couldnt have expected the experts to understand you; because you
decided to take the same step as Richard Wagner had so successfully laid
down. You turned direct to the audience with your musical work: the public.
Under the title Enjoy I, you went with friends on a concert
tour through Germany, which was unparalleled in the field of contemporary
serious music.
Young people, in particular, streamed to your electronic concerts, and 800
to 1200 visitors per concert were normal and this at a time, when
German premieres of world-famous new toners could only pull just about 150-200
listeners by the skin of their teeth.
The success of your tour Enjoy I with the audience, showed you
had been right. But what did the experts say?
PETER HUEBNER: It made some think,
others were outraged.
In order to understand this, you must consider the conditions, the avant-garde
had created: they had opened the doors to musical chaos whereas music,
in particular, has always been the classical discipline to present natural
orders, and to revive them in the listeners.
As the natural and inevitable harmonical structures of the microcosm of
music have no standing within atonal compositions whatsoever, the assessment
of the quality of such music only takes place intellectually.
Well quite a few chaotic people have made the greatest efforts to
establish the system of modern music, they blather on intellectually, fabricate
complicated constructions on their compositional drawing-board, and cheekily
proclaim, with a lot of good connections, them to be music.
And up pops an individual, all on his own, without the intellectual protection
of the mass of new toners, and thinks he can simply ignore all these modern
dissonant achievements!
In a piece of work that is committed to natural harmony, everybody hears,
whether the composer at least masters his tool: if he infringes on the laws
of harmony, it sounds out of tune, and as a human being was given the feeling
for musical harmony at birth, even a child can identify such mistakes
without any intellectual musical training.
That doesnt really say anything about the artistic value of such a
composition but it certainly does about the composers quality
of craft.
Besides, there are quite a number of further criteria for assessing the
craft of a harmonious composer: how he deals with tonality, harmony, rhythm,
with the counterpoint, and many other things provide objective information
on the composers skills as a craftsman.
The harmonical framework prescribes the harmonically composing tone creator
clearly outlined working conditions with which he can carry out his craft.
If he leaves this framework, he doesnt understand his craft, and,
as is well-known, every child will hear this.
The person approaching music from the outside, in whose inner being music
doesnt grow naturally, who has, however, decided to produce complex
harmonious compositions, will usually fail the demands of the harmonical,
and will be at risk of getting stuck with the classical slushy song
as in the drastic case of Richard Wagners son.
In how far a harmonious composition breathes natural life, is largely independent
from the outer craft, and only shows itself, when the music in the listeners
world of experience is able to naturally set subtle and fulfilling fields
of life in vibration which makes him want to hear this work again
and again.
The extent of natural life only determines the artistic level of a composition.