SPONTANEOUS FEELINGS LEADING TO CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS
Without doubt, music is necessary to direct agitation and purpose to create something new. It's not only Eisler who proved this with his solidarity songs, e.g. "Red Wedding", "Secret deployment" or "Song of the songs". On the other hand, it is indispensable to create music that stimulates the transfer of spontaneous feelings into conscious emotions, as inexorable reality demands a more rational approach in order to create point of departures for a new, better society. But is it possible to realize this approach with music? In my compositions I try to find ways to solutions. Here it is necessary to remember that music cannot create feelings that have not already existed. One becomes angry or depressive spontaneously, one loves, one becomes sad, one feels elated only for a moment. But these feelings only occur in relation to something. And it is quite possible that mental states like joy, depression, melancholy, or dejection can be the same. It depends on the character of a person: the way one is, the way one thinks, the way one got used to feeling. 
[In: "Für später: jetzt". Thoughts on a way to compose. (1982)]

 

MUSIC AND UTOPIA
The composer has to deal with existing "worlds of imaginations", knots of prejudice and subcutaneous feelings. As the writer Anna Seghers would say, "one should participate in dissolving the paralyzation of the people who were driven into an imperialistic Coke- and McDonald's 'culture' by long-lasting fascist or fascistic influences". A composer, who feels responsible, has to go the same way, even though the frame of action is limited, especially by the tendency of being restricted from the conservative mechanisms from "above". Composing and performing music is a process evolving in dialectic relation to political developments. Therefore, there is no reason to be dependent on a way of thinking that concentrates on utopian hopes. The realization of hope for better times can be supported in an active way.
[In: "Für später: jetzt". Thoughts on a way to compose. (1982)]

 

TECHNIQUE OF LISTENING (1)
Brecht once said, "there is an art of drama and an art of spectators". In analogy to this statement, we have the art of composing and the art of listening. This does not mean that one has to listen in an intellectual way. Instead, the composer has to support the process of developing a new technique of hearing. In my early pieces, I dealt with this problem in a way that the audience was directly included and provoked to take part in my works. 
[In: "Für später: jetzt". Thoughts on a way to compose (1982)]

 

LIMITS OF MUSIC
My decision not to compose pieces for concert hall has been a result of my performance practice. I was partially motivated by the suspicion that music does not have enough power to influence, or even to change, bourgeois audiences. Certainly, music does not have the ability to evoke radical changes in society, as music only represents a part of the arts and a part of philosophical, intellectual thinking. But on the other hand, I can at least imagine situations in which I could concentrate on organizing demonstrations or political agitation again. 
[In: "…rote Fäden…" Conversation with Johannes Bultmann (1994)]

 

THESE ARE THE POINTS
These are the points:

    • Creating music that refers to the "world" with its (acoustic) conditions - nevertheless, these are caused by the inside, that means by social mechanisms, or by being forced upon people by another culture or power; from the outside to the inside;
    • Composing music that is not only referring to an obsolete reality but - at least subliminally - to people, their feelings and their health;
    • Composing music that refers to and deals with existing problems in society instead of neglecting, covering or even idealizing them;
    • Composing music that shows social gashes and intensifies problems in society, even referring to them in a toxic way;
    • Composing music that strengthens resistance and sharpens the emotions and ways of thinking instead of creating illusions of harmony and happiness;
    • Composing music that refers to its own specific qualities and that offers food for the mind and soul in a multilayered (which does not mean complicated) way. Music should expand cognitive and emotional perception instead of reducing the reception of music to a level of animal-like reactions to superficial sentimentalities;
    • Composers who do not capitulate at the sight of existing problems, but deal with diseases by transferring them into their work. Composers who provoke, shock and cause irritations in order to destroy social crusts and to show perspectives that lead to a free and broadened perception of social phenomena in society;
    • Composers who develop clear positions and show alternative worlds to a daily routine - creating systems that refer to a change of existing conditions in an allegorical way;
    • And composers who try to do these things with a certain verve, enthusiasm, fantasy, and serenity in order to open positive rooms, "alternative rooms and skies" (Luigi Nono); And
    • An audience that is willing to open its minds and to be curious;
    • An audience that replies to provocations and disturbances with its own engagement and thoughts;
    • Listeners who learn to decipher musical contexts and to integrate these auditory experiences in their ways of thinking as a part of cognitive and emotional knowledge. And, as a consequence: listeners who increasingly react to acoustic environmental pollution - as caused by the worldwide tendency to background music, by noises directly or by music creating dull feelings - in allergic ways;
    • An audience that is basically able to enjoy unsolved phenomena, and listeners who formulate questions without expecting definite answers. As a result, we have music characterized by specific places and situations and at least dealing with material that embodies everyday experience as well as its historical conditions and its meanings for the future;
    • Composers who consider questionable phenomena as an important, even most decisive principle and who try to create a basis for opportunities to sharpen the senses. Questions - when answered - should at least cast new questions.
    • An audience that demands these points and expects new music to refer to the past from a present point of view. The past tried the same in its times and as a result it developed out of the same principles.
      [In: Polyphonie von Welten (1999)]

 

MUSIC AWAKES
Music awakes time, it awakes us to enjoy the most delicious use of time. But in fact it is (only one space) still true that it (music) is of ambivalent character. (Thomas Mann: Der Zauberberg)
Especially in respect to these points, music is of special relevance and importance. Music is multilayered and therefore able to represent quite a fitting symbol of a complex reality. It embodies many aspects of everyday life: from spontaneous emotion to calculated thinking and from extreme complexity to (sometimes-complicated) simplicity. Music represents many shades of human mood. It is of special relevance to music that it is able to emphasize contexts, which would require long-lasting verbal explanations.
[In: Nicht Traum. Traum: (1999)]

 

TECHNIQUE OF LISTENING (2)
There are various grades of perception, even absolutely different points of view. In an art gallery, we can be fascinated by a work at once and later we learn to decipher its contexts by dealing with it for a longer span of time and in a more intense way. These are the mechanisms of transferring art into our world. And these are undoubtedly equivalent to the process of meeting an unknown person. In a fraction of a second, we develop special kinds of behavior, which are confirmed or changed in the run of time - in fact, a process not quite different from that of rational analysis. Well, we have the same mechanisms in music. Our first perception is characterized by the dominance of emotion - a form of reception many people consider as the only or even the best way of music consumption (a fatal point of view, that makes one throw up). But in some cases, we may already listen analytically if we hear a new piece. (The grade of cognitive, rational perception depends on a person's social background.) Later, while hearing a piece of music for the second or the third time - maybe even reading the score or some texts - it is possible to reach new areas of a composition, for instance its connections to other art forms or life in general. Each serious piece of music should supply the opportunity of dealing with circumstances of life (even in excessive ways). But maybe it is enough, if music represents a kind of generator in order to discover areas that have been unknown before. Areas that could be used as a counterpoint to existing conditions in order to change or to influence these. 
[In: Nicht Traum. Traum: (1999)]

 

MUSIC IS A WAY OF THINKING, THAT LISTENS 
The surrealistic painter René Magritte said, "My painting is a way of thinking that observes." In music this could mean: "Music is a way of thought that listens" or "…requires a way of thinking that hears." 
[In: Nicht Traum. Traum: (1999)]

 

 

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