JOURNALIST:
Is there also an intellectual concept for harmonically structured music, e.g.
as with 12-tone music or serial music?
PETER HUEBNER: Well, the microcosm of music is an existing reality
of nature of enormous complexity. If I only have a small insight, then I will
only make a small discovery. And if this insight deepens, then my discovery
will expand. Research into the microcosm of music reveals a great number of
conformities to natural laws, and from those, we are able to derive laws.
We know today that the conformities to natural laws of complex rhythmical
function in the human organism which was found in chronomedicine, can also
be derived from the microcosm of music, for both were recognised as identical.
Johannes Kepler derived the laws, according to which the heavenly bodies move,
from his knowledge of the microcosm of music. And modern nuclear physics,
as well as modern astronomy, have discovered facts and realities in the sub-nuclear
as well as the galactic sphere that are the same as we can also find in the
microcosm of music.
Compared to such investigations and derivations of laws in the microcosm of
music, the most comprehensive music theories of the avant-garde become restricted.
But the reason for this, is that in the microcosm of music we draw from that
which the Creator has made. The microcosm of music is an area of His creation,
and not at all created by human mind or hand. And the laws which move His
countless elements, are also the Creator’s laws.
In this respect, the intellectual concept of the microcosm of music can always
only be something of a musicological theory shaped by science which may then
become the basis for musical creations.
In today’s times, many people are confused by the aspect of perfection.
At an automobile fair, many are astonished about the enormous technology of
a car manufacturer. But nobody is astonished about the incomparably enormous
technology which finds its expression in the fly’s eye whose owner is
just at that moment sitting on the exterior mirror, and is seemingly rubbing
her hands and/or her tiny forelegs.
In contrast to the unnatural, the natural distinguishes itself by simplicity,
by inconspicuousness, by discreetness. The complexity of an elephant’s
harmonious movements are hardly noticed by the modern observer. It is the
other way round with the comparatively primitive behaviour as a driver during
the Formula 1 Race – probably because the drivers there generate higher
turnovers and/or earn more than an elephant.
Modern industrial societies have a price to pay for this sort of blindness
towards the natural, which shows in form of diseases, disasters, catastrophes,
depressions and many other things, and this blindness does not make an exception
for the whole area of music.
Atonal music, also my own from earlier times, at first glance, seems to be
intelligent, interesting, complicated and exciting to the restricted spirit
of our scientific technological age. And perfectly naturally structured music
seems to the same people to be boring, simple, uninteresting, music to fall
asleep by. But this problem is not a problem of music, but a problem of development
of the listener and the music creator.
JOURNALIST: Herr Huebner, what is harmony and what is disharmony?
PETER HUEBNER: Musically, disharmony is the deviation from the natural
order of the laws of harmony of the microcosm of music.
In contrast, harmony is the order used in the composition of the laws of harmony
of the microcosm of music.
Harmony is that which a plain human being feels to be harmonious. It is a
mistake to believe that being able to feel harmony is a matter of practice.
The composers of disharmonious music always point to Beethoven or Wagner to
say they, too, needed a long time to find recognition. But this comparison
is not correct.
Regarding tonal harmony in their music, they never had difficulties –
they couldn’t have – well, that is, disregarding Wagner’s Tristan.
Concerning Beethoven, the experts were locked in dispute with him, because
he brought the emotional into music – today usually described as “dynamics”.
Bach was still of the opinion that manipulation of volume was only aimed at
superficially manipulating feelings, and from a purely musical point of view
didn’t mean anything at all – instead even distracted from the purely
musical.
Wagner’s disputes with the experts at the time, were about his annoyance
that they didn’t know the first thing about music – the same also
applied to the interpreters.
But it was never about the aspect of harmony. Harmonical music is a matter
which is scientifically objectively verifiable, and what is felt to be harmonious
or not is, across the cultures, not a question of taste or of education, but
is solely based on the fact that the biological system of human beings is
harmonically structured, and that here especially the ear is physiologically
aimed at the knowledge and preference of natural, harmonical structures. Here,
with regard to the medical effect, the biological systems are equipped with
automatic amplifying and muffling mechanisms, that is more or less, with sympathy
and antipathy mechanisms.
An analysis of the compositional structure can, of course, also provide information
on whether it is harmonious or disharmonious music. Such musicologically harmonical
knowledge is very important if you want to judge the quality of music. The
microcosm of music reveals to us a world of music which does not know disharmony.
The nature of a tone is made in such a way that, when it is made as an integrated
whole – i.e. when it is a natural unity – it develops according
to the laws of harmony of the microcosm of music.
There are mock tones which are in reality artificially created mixtures of
tones which are mixed together from the outside – be it with mechanical
or electronic musical instruments. Such “tones” have no natural
development according to the laws of harmony of the microcosm of music.