JOURNALIST: Until this very day you have not let yourself be linked to any national institution – why?

PETER HÜBNER: When Professor Zimmermann once asked me: “What do you intend to do later?”, I told him I would like to live as a free composer – for reasons of a free musical development. He told me that he agreed with this opinion, but that unfortunately, he had so far not managed to live on his work as a free composer, and that this was the reason why, at least for the time being, he still had to work as a professor.

And my philosophical discussions with him which – as already previously mentioned – only marginally touched on music, led in my opinion to more fertile inspiration than all the nonsense that is intended for the subject composition in the official academy curriculum.

If today I am able to make a living with my music as a free-lance composer, I don’t seriously believe that I am better than Bernd Alois Zimmermann.

But only the fact that, following my research into the microcosm of music, I turned to harmonical music, has lead to a large part of my music being harmonious today. It therefore reaches a wider audience, and I earn so much from the sale of CDs that I can make a living on this.

But I don’t regard these earnings as an expression of my musical quality, because in these present superficial times, a musical dead loss is also able to earn an enormous amount in light music.

I can only wish that all serious composers – who live, think and also compose according to their very own personal ethical conviction – can make a living out of their work as free com­pos­ers.

This also applies for the avant-garde, even if I myself – looking at it superficially – am taking the opposite way. What links me to quite a few of them, is the fact that I, like them, in my life, thinking and musical work am only committed to my very own conscience. That, of course, also links me to Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Herbert Eimert, and not least to Richard Wagner, Beethoven, Bach and some of the other old ones.

JOURNALIST: What is the aim of your musical work?

PETER HÜBNER: On the basis of my investigations into the microcosm of music, on the basis of very personal inner experiences, on the basis of my view of today’s situation in the world and on the basis of my present personal assessment of the sense of music I strive to create and to spread harmony with music in this torn world.^Beethoven

I personally don’t see any sense in additionally demonstrating, analysing and supporting the existing disharmony in the world with my art.^Liszt
I did this sufficiently until the end of the 60ies, and I also think that a number of other composers did this before and after me with great powers of persuasion, and still do so. None of them needs me to support their activities.

Nature shows us that a thing always needs its natu­ral coun­ter­bal­ance. The per­fect por­trayal of dis­har­mony and dis­or­der by the avant-garde, through rock and pop mu­sic, as well as through the mod­ern rhyth­mi­cal fixed style of per­form­ing clas­si­cal mu­sic, in my opin­ion, calls for the per­fect por­trayal of natu­ral har­mony and or­der as a natu­ral op­po­site pole.

And as I see nobody working consciously creatively in this sector, I have taken over this task – I believe in everybody’s interest: Since the early 70ies I have devoted my research into the microcosm of music, but also my investigations into classical musical work and/or ethnic music, and following this, my musical developments and/or musical creations – to be consistent and without compromise – to the aspect of natural harmony.^Casals

However, it is my opinion, that I only seem to go against or defy the avant-garde in this respect.

JOURNALIST: Could you explain that in more detail?

PETER HÜBNER: I believe that by creating contrast, the performance of the avant-garde is illuminated. There are always stupid people – among the avant-garde, too – who think that in my work I have returned to the “stone age”.
They do not recognise that grasping the natural is an extremely modern task, and may entail enormous difficulties.^Heine

From the viewpoint of the microcosm, music by the avant-garde and therefore also the entire dissonant music is an absolute natural phenomenon – just like chaos and order are equally nature’s phenomena.

But during a time in which all musical experts have devoted themselves to the field of disharmony, it seems important to me for at least one person to concentrate on natural harmony in the sense of an opposite pole.

I have written plenty of atonal music. Creating atonal or tonal music was and is for me personally not a question of musical ability, but a question of conscience, of a free inner decision – detached from the fashions and trends of time, and from the appreciation connected with them.