JOURNALIST: And so what about the craft of the new toners?

PETER HUEBNER: The missing of a harmonical framework also has its effect on the compositional craft of the new toners: you can, e.g., meet the demands of twelve-tone music with simple calculations.

I can explain these demands in a few days to a person of average musical talent – let’s say i.e. an employee at Volkswagen or Philips, and after a very short time, he will be able to deliver the most complicated musical drawing-board constructions which correspond in every way to the requirements of the avant-garde.

If, in addition, he now also starts calling himself a musical avant-gardist for everyone to hear, and finally eagerly and astutely begins to build up good connections to the avant-garde critics and presenters – who have also often studied composition, but who have not managed to come out as composers, and who have for that reason joined a newspaper or radio broadcasting – , you have here the typical level of a very large circle of avant-garde musicians and their supporters.

As for some, it is great to be a composer, and atonal music does not require any natural musical talent at all, a number of chaotic people, with the need for recognition, have chosen the profession of a musical avant-gardist, and have today occupied the official sector of “serious contemporary musical development”, in which, according to their own rules, they need not achieve anything else, but to create long-winded music constructions, which they then explain in a complicated way.^Tschaikovsky

In this way, a group of incompetent people have got together, who are only really successful by pulling the wool over people’s eyes – people who indeed pay them, but definitely avoid their music – , and making them believe that they should change their hearing habits, and that, perhaps in fifty years, they will be as intelligent as they are, and then understand their music.

To these good-for-nothings, I am like the little boy in the fairytale “The emperor’s new clothes”, who shouts: “The emperor is not wearing anything at all”.

And for these kind of musical hypocrites, my music has always been pure heresy – as an official success of this music would mean their musical end.
For the upright, musically educated expert, however, Music, that is orientated towards the natural laws of harmony of the microcosm of music, always was and still is a treasure-house, as, within the compositional craft which can be objectively assessed, it possesses a high level, and points to new horizons.

JOURNALIST: What do you think – how do today’s critics assess your work?

PETER HUEBNER: Only time can make a judgement of the artistic value of a piece of work. I think all respectable experts agree on that nowadays, after the many shameful “flops” of the critics in the past.
Nowadays, it is obvious that the spiteful critics during the lifetime of the great classical composers, only showed their envy when they vehemently tore their work apart.^Stravinsky

I think critics would no longer readily make such blatant mistakes, which really only shows them as they really are.

If many generations of listeners from the various cultural areas want to hear a piece of work again and again, this demonstrates, how much it really stimulates natural life in the listener, and that this is great art.

JOURNALIST: Herr Huebner, in approx. 1970, you withdrew from public musical life. What did you do at that time?

PETER HUEBNER: For the first time in 1968, I created pieces of work with “Faust”, “Light threads”, and “Electronic choirs”, which, from a rhythmical and tonal point of view, were orientated towards the natural laws of harmony, used by nature in the microcosm of tones and sounds.
After this, I withdrew for the time-being, as I wanted to search for the great musical traditions in the world.

I went on extensive journeys to Asia, Africa, as well as North and South America, and, taking into account our European tradition in music, set about developing the musical knowledge and natural musical laws, which are common to all peoples and great cultures, and which unite with the laws of nature.

These fundamental musical investigations revealed an increasingly profound insight into the nature of human existence, and the musical meaning linked to it.^Novalis

The piece of work “Song of life”, which was later included in the lessons at the Vienna Music College by Professor Haase, was created during this time, and builds on my new musical and human insight.

JOURNALIST: In “Song of life”, which opens up the world of sound of classical, electronic and archaic instruments, you completely devote yourself, as far as context goes, for the first time to the inner nature of life, and you unfold the natural evolution of man’s inner world in form of an epic happening, by giving the inner characteristics and abilities of humans the roles of acting people.

PETER HUEBNER: Yes, in “Song of life”, that, what I had longed for most since the age of eighteen, came true, because here I achieved, in content and form, the ancient, classical level of musical work in epic terms: the resonance with nature’s laws of harmony, aiming at perfect harmony and the revival of the inner human powers.^Beethoven

With this musical piece for the stage “Song of life”, I was suddenly able to point the way, and place the natural evolution of human powers into the centre of intellectual and musical contemplation.