PETER HÜBNER: Not entirely. At the same time, I had also enrolled with Herbert Eimert who had set up and ran the electronic studio. Participation in his electronic studio required a completed study of composition – he explained to me.

I told him that I did not have such qualifications, but that I could show him a score from a large opera, in which I had realised the principles of his serial musical theory.

So, I left the score with him. After a week he returned it to me, informing me that I could start my work in his studio and realise the electronic part of my opera.

And so every week I met up with the technical director of this studio of the music academy, Gerhard Rautenbach, and together with him realised the electronic music for the opera’s Diogenes-Vision. He was a sensitive man, not at all a typical technocrat, and as such an excellent partner for realising this work

For Prof. Dr. Herbert Eimert this electronic work was a great success for the studio. He asked me to let him and/or the music academy have the score (approx. 4 m wide and 1.5 m high) and had it hung on the large wall of the studio – where it could not be overlooked by anybody entering.
And year in, year out, he proudly showed everybody who came from the home country or abroad this score.

To me he never uttered a word about this – anyway, he wasn’t a man to talk big, but in my opinion he was a unique thinker.
And the entire avant-garde has so far benefited more from him than they are actually aware of.

He is not only the founder of the first electronic studio in the world (at the “Westdeutsche Rundfunk”, the West German Radio) and the father of electronic music, but, besides Arnold Schönberg and somebody else, he is also one of the three founders of modern serial compositional technique and above all, the person to complete this musical theory.

JOURNALIST: Would you say that the time at the music academy in Cologne was useful to you?

PETER HÜBNER: Yes. Absolutely. On one hand, I was able to work there in the electronic studio. On the other hand, Prof. Zimmermann also confirmed my general mental attitude to music, and possibly made sure that the then head of the cultural department of Cologne, Kurt Hackenberg, supported me financially when I set up my own electronic studio.

JOURNALIST: What was the attitude of the academy’s man­age­ment towards you?

PETER HÜBNER: On the whole very good. However, the academy tried to impose a single task on me, this was my participation in the academy’s choir. However, in 1966 I then opted out of some choral work.

The principal and deputy principal of the academy warned me several times, supposedly a lesson was cancelled in the main subject, and they also threatened that further non-compliance with the commitment I had taken towards the academy would lead to even stricter measures and would finally mean having my name removed from the academy’s register

Finally, the principal of the academy invited me into his office and begged me almost on his knees to take part in the academy’s choir. He admitted that nobody wanted to join the choir, but if they let me get away with it, everybody would refer to me and nobody would turn up. And this would be a breach of the academy’s rules.

The academy and also the ministry for the arts and sciences had already made an exception with me by exempting me from all lessons. But would I please, for heaven’s sake, go to the choir. Once a week for 2 hours. He could not justify it in front of the other students if I didn’t go. The whole choir was in danger of falling apart.

JOURNALIST: And what was your reaction?

PETER HÜBNER: I replied that first of all I had never committed myself in any way to the academy, and that therefore it was his problem alone to solve this matter and not mine. I also regarded it as a violation of my mind to sing this ridiculous song – I’d perhaps come when there were other things on the agenda. But I couldn’t act against my conscience, because it was clear to me that this would also be the end of my career, and he couldn’t ask me to do this, neither could the minister for the arts – nobody could.^Beethoven

Then he threatened to throw me out of the academy. I told him that this was also his problem alone and that of the minister for the arts and not mine. They should do what they thought was right. But it might be possible that I was the only one to bring some form of praise to the academy one day and to give justification to the academy’s existence. It was true that I couldn’t be absolutely sure that I was the only one in many decades,^Brahms but I could promise him, I was one of them. And I didn’t care one bit what decision they would make – I would definitely not go to the coir.

JOURNALIST: And what happened then?

PETER HÜBNER: I didn’t go to the choir, I never went to the choir again, I was also never asked again to go to the choir, neither was I thrown out of the academy. I never heard anything again in this matter, and the existence of the academy’s choir has also so far coped with my absence.

JOURNALIST: When did you finish your time at the academy of music in Cologne?

PETER HÜBNER: I was registered at the academy until 1969 in order to use the electronic studio.