Archetypical career of the
classical composer



JOURNALIST: Mr. Hübner, you have such an exceptional music career behind you that it seems important to me to ask you personally about your background as a musician and composer – before others perhaps make up their own stories.

As a composer you are a natural talent and have never formally studied music. The work of a natural talent is often surrounded by the air of sensationalism and has, especially in your case, again and again aroused great astonishment – above all among the music experts. How do you deal with this phenomenon?

PETER HÜBNER: I understand that, as an outsider, you would regard this as sensational: a boy, just turned 19 years old, sits down at his desk and starts to write down very complex compositions.

JOURNALIST: Of which significant contemporary composers say that only a very talented person could realise such a high standard after studying a long time with a very good composer.

PETER HÜBNER: For an outsider this may be sensational – I myself, however, have always experienced the process of composing as something quite natural, and still experience it in the same way today.

You see, I don’t “make” music as such, but rather the music grows in me, it is there in a natural way and matures, and I only have to activate a kind of mental switch, and then I see the score of what sounds in me in front of my mind’s eye. Then all that is left to do, is write it down.

There is no effort, no inner struggle, no emotional wrestling – it is all very simple and natural.

JOURNALIST: And how do you explain your talent?

PETER HÜBNER: Others may seek explanations, I just take it as it is. Why should I look for explanations?

When I observe nature, I find that really everything in it is exceptional. I regard it as pointless to have to seek an explanation particularly for my gift of nature, and I ask you - of what use would that be?

Perhaps you could best compare it with the growth of a child in the mother’s womb. The mother doesn’t really experience this as something sensational; neither will she claim that she consciously forms her baby in detail. And which mother now commences to desperately look for explanations why her baby is growing inside her in all details in just this way.

It is a natural process for her, and I experience in the same sort of very unsensational way the inner natural growth of my musical work.

Another fact is that this process does not wear me out and doesn’t leave an emptiness behind which might provoke questions – on the contrary: this musical growth process is combined with a fulfilling experience of happiness which flows into the composition, and which is conveyed to many others who then listen to this music.

JOURNALIST: Mr. Hübner, nature has a central significance in your work. What can your tell us about your attitude to nature?

PETER HÜBNER: When I experience the inner and outer creations of nature, its unlimited power to connect opposites to each other in complete harmony, then nature reveals itself to me as the perfect organ of the Creator.

I have a very personal relationship with nature, and I experience it as nature’s clear ethical instructions to strengthen natural harmony in the world with my compositions by using the natural laws of harmony of the microcosm of music.

©   A A R   E D I T I O N   I N T E R N A T I O N A L   2001