And there we have arrived at the sensational, which so many lack in naturally structured music.

Wagner today is performed sensationally – quite in the same way as for the dictator Adolf Hitler, only: these performances have nothing to do with Wagner’s ethical musical inspiration.

Naturally structured classical music lives off the sensation of the natural, but that is not spectacular, not loud, not pushy: the sensation in nature is life.

Under the protection of superficial mass media, the flight of a rocket to the moon is sensational in our times. But – what is really sensational about it?
How many light beams does nature constantly send out through the entire cosmos – quite beyond the vociferous medial greed for sensation?

Just ask the constructers who build the rockets, whether they could build you a small, insignificant house-fly?

A decent rocket-builder will tell you that in the feelers of a fly alone so many principles of design have been put into practice, which the rocket technicians could only dream about.

The feeler of a fly is not spectacular, but for me it is a natural sensation. And it is the same as with classical music.

This music shows life in its natural harmony, and this is unobtrusive, reserved and not spectacular at all – but it is sensational in its structural wealth and in its wonder of life.

Absolute conditional for a natural music performance is that a love of life is a priority for the musicians.

Making music must never become just a job to be done.

This also means that a musician must never be forced to make music he doesn’t love, and that, ideally, the orchestra is able to rehearse in one go, until everybody is really satisfied with the results.

But now take a look at today’s orchestral practice: the conductor or musical director usually decide what is to be played – the musicians, as a rule, are hardly asked.

And then rehearsing time is very limited. The piece must be perfect in five, six rehearsals.

Who will want to sound the depths of a great classical piece of music in this time, and internalise the statements on the nature of life in terms of music?
Under those circumstances, making music becomes a lifeless and technical process, which frustrates the musician, as he no longer serves the music, but instead show business, or the mere acquisition of money.

Then there is a further aspect: the master pieces of our great tone creators show the diversity of our inner vital energies in natural company with each other.

If this high level of life is to be presented by the musicians in a convincing way, the musicians must themselves become the natural expression of this very lively with each other, the musical performance then becomes the means of expression of their perfect human communication.

But what sort of practice does the musician get into today?

I have heard famous star-conductors, who publicly called their orchestra “my instrument”, which they seriously thought to be able to play on.

For such an arrogant brute, the musician is really supposed to become the instrument, a lifeless machine – the musician’s own living contribution must appear to such a dictator as rebellion.

Apart from the fact that it is unacceptable anyway to employ people as machines, this is indeed fatal for music and is absolutely contrary to the demands of natural, classical music, whose personal interest is the living, musical presentation of natural human dignity.

An orchestra musician who once chose his profession out of great love for music, sees himself bitterly disappointed after a short while, as his daily routine leaves him hardly any opportunities for developing his musical genius.

That, which lives in him as classical music, is systematically suffocated, and so we mustn’t be surprised that there are a lot of addiction problems among orchestra musicians. ^Beethoven