PETER HÜBNER: And that puts him in a position to approach the Creator as if he were a friend, and to greet him as such – that simple person, who, in this work for the stage, is seen by the Christian congregation as a beggar who is heedlessly given hand-outs.^Herder

JOURNALIST: In your piece for the stage “Curse or blessing: Yet”, you take the sort of understanding as a starting-point that, on the basis of the immeasurable, inexplicable misfortune in the world, only the devil can be regarded as the creator of the world.

And you finally show that, with the same right, a positive God can be seen as the creator of the world.

PETER HÜBNER: The fact is that this positive or that negative knowledge of the world is not a matter of the world itself, but only lies hidden in the eye of the beholder.

JOURNALIST: And beyond that, you show the possibility of human development ^Kant which exceeds this view of a bad world as being the work of the devil, or that good world being the work of God, and therefore leads to a higher world-view, which itself sees the great mistake of an ignorant life in the knowledge of good and bad, in the knowledge of space and time, in the knowledge of light and shadow, in the knowledge of shape and shapelessness – useful for creating suppressed educational mechanisms: suitable for the ambitious social climb up the ladder to lead the entire world to the edge of the abyss.^Rousseau

PETER HÜBNER: Yes, Kchatom grows into the role of that blind seer, who is not really externally blind, but who attaches more rights to the very own law of life, and to the very own inner vision of life,^Sartre and therefore trusts his own conscience and free will more than all religions, philosophies and ideologies which cause a loss of individuality, and in the end only leave the individual on his own, despondently facing the great question of his personal life – eye to eye opposite the unsuccessful life role of Sysiphus or that fatalistic role of Diogenes.^Freud

JOURNALIST: You created “Curse or blessing: Yet” from 1958 to 1966, and drafted it for the large orchestra, electronic music as well as choir and soloists.

It is serial, thus composed in a further developed form of twelve-tone music.

With “Curse or blessing: Yet” you not only advance to the limits of the so-called modern, dissonant avant-garde of the mid 20ieth century, but you open new doors for linking orchestra music with electronic music, in the field of direction, dramatisation, singing, ballet and mime.

In 1968, you then talk about the notational developments connected with the creation of this piece at the Berlin Festival Weeks during the International Week for experimental music.

PETER HÜBNER: Apart from the so-called orchestra version with an integrated electronic part, there is also a purely electronic version. I called this electronic opera “Causality”, because if we assume that causality is the relationship between cause and effect, and if we assume that cause and effect are dependent on each other, then this principle of polar dependency can be found in many different ways and at many different levels in the opera “Curse or blessing: Yet”.

JOURNALIST: So, “Curse or blessing: Yet” and “Causality” is the orchestra version as well as the electronic version of one and the same opera?!

PETER HÜBNER: Yes, that’s right.