Admittedly, it is really our duty, as artists, to hold up a mirror to our own era; but, on the other hand, these works have lives of their own, and they're still alive today. |
After all, lyrical poetry's main concern is to express, inc this way, a fleeting constellation of various elements. |
All music has to speak in some form or other. |
And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away. |
Because lyrical poetry was still relatively new; it only first emerged with Klopstock, or, if you will, you might go back to Gryphius. This was a completely new mode of expression. It emerged, at the very latest, during the Enlightenment. |
Brahms believed that there was no need to publish absolutely everything that Schubert ever wrote. |
But Brahms himself was extremely self-critical; he was always pruning and polishing his works. |
But the thing that will always occupy me the most is music. |
But, on the other hand, if Schubert were alive today, he would find even richer fields to plow. |
Had Beethoven been able to carry out all his plans to fruition, then, for example, today we would have his opera Macbeth, a Faust, and many others. He would have contracted himself to write a whole series of operas. |
I am not of the opinion, that works of art must be unconditionally linked to what was happening at the time they were created. |
I believe Schubert had many different methods for familiarizing himself with a poem: reading it aloud and silently, always thinking up new ideas about it, first letting various things knock around inside his head, until he finally decides what to do. |
I came together with younger musicians and tried to pass on my own experiences. In the process, I always tried to maintain my curiosity and spontaneity. |
I have always regarded myself as a person who had to accomplish what was required. |
If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief. |