JOURNALIST: Herr Hübner, you consciously hold your musical work in the tradition of the great classical composers.

But as you very often also employ electronic means to realise your work, even experts keep asking, why you, in particular, who is so committed to nature, very frequently use electronic means, and not exclusively and logically “natural” instruments?

PETER HÜBNER: If a composition has matured in me, then I hear it inside, sounding full of life.

Nowadays, many so-called fans of classical music say that music can only be called classical, when it is performed with the instruments of a classical orchestra.

This only shows that these musical experts have no insight into the process of the natural creation of music.

Nature creates a classical composition in a tone creator, not as a song of praise to instruments – natural music creation is not an acoustic end in itself: when a natural composition is created in the mind,
i.e. when nature brings out a piece of music in the composer’s creative imagination, then it does so to stimulate the natural evolution of his diverse inner powers of life.

In this inner-human developing process, the structural development of music plays the main part, because through this, the dynamic interaction and development of his powers of life are shown – the thought of instruments or musicians or an orchestra has no space in this.

Later, the classical composer then tries to make the tone creation that has grown inside him sound to the listener as true to nature as possible in the outer acoustic space.

And if, e.g., he can best express a certain part of this inner musical creation with a horn, then he will instrument this part for a horn.

But what is he to do if this part of the piece is to sound for such a long time that the horn player runs out of breath, or if his inner inspiration demands a range which the physical instrument doesn’t have, or if the passage heard inside turns out to be so difficult for the player that he can’t even play it?

So far, a classical composer had to make concessions to the composition he heard inside, meaning he had to restrict its statement – mutilate it, so to speak.

But with today’s electronic means, for instance, he can have a horn sound as long as required, and at exactly the range and degree of difficulty his musical inspiration tells him to, and in this way he will present the work, to a large extent, as it sounds inside him.

In this respect, the most important thing is the life structure of the composition – the natural living logic it possesses – , and not so much the tone colour, as so many followers of so-called natural instruments assume.

Johann Sebastian Bach, in his time, left no doubt that it is just that natural structure of a composition, which awakens a superior quality of life in the listener, and that tone colour, volume and dynamics, etc. – which today are thought of so highly – are of absolutely secondary significance: as such, don’t even touch the actual field of music.

Just compare it to a sculpture. Whether the Pieta by Michel-angelo were formed in this marble or that marble, or even in plaster or wood, it would hardly do any harm to the artistic statement on the inner spiritual life of this work of art.

It is the structure in which the living statement finds its expression – not the material. And the same applies to a music creation which has grown naturally.

Some music professionals say during my recordings: “The cello in that concert sounds much too pure; with a real cello, you must still be able to hear the bow scratching the string”, or: “That piece is so impersonal, everything is so perfect, you never hear anybody breathing or coughing, or just playing slightly out of tune”.

Such music professionals have never entered the inner realm of music, and, as educated experts, are further away from the experience “music” than the plain man and woman in the street, who, supposedly, don’t know the first thing about classical music.

He who chains himself to the instrument, will never advance to the magic kingdom of music.

And I ask myself: what do some experts imagine the process of composing to be like, and what is their understanding of faithfulness to the original?

If Beethoven had experienced a scratching inside, as part of the composition, he would certainly have noted it, because scratching on a cello is not difficult at all, and to cough and pant is even easier.