Helmut Lachenmann

On composition

If the act of composing is meant to go beyond the tautological use of pre-existing expressive forms and - as a creative act - to recall that human potential which grants man the dignity of a cognizant being, able to act on the basis of this cognition, then composition is by no means a "putting together", but rather a "taking apart" and more: a confrontation with the interconnections and necessities of the musical substance. Whichever way this process is effectuated, be it rationally or intuitively, it alone can make good Schoenberg's unsurpassable observation: the artist's highest goal - to express himself. (Vier Grundbestimmungen des Musikhörens, 1979)

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Learning process, artistic pleasure and the chance of being understood

Artistic experience as the practice and test of one's power not only to thrust forwards into the harrowing regions of the unknown, but to shatter the illusion of security and pene-trate into the reality of insecurity; to grasp the multitude of possible experiences at the same time as the contradictions among their values, and to be able to come to terms with them: this would be a social learning process and artistic pleasure in one. The composer who orientates himself on these guidelines has the chance to be understood if he uncompromisingly opposes society's communicative rules and affective expectations. His music, created within this newly won freedom, addresses itself to society in an unmistakable manner by consistently obstructing the path which society would like to clear to the work of art according to its own concepts. (Die gefährdete Kommunikation, 1973)

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Listening vs. Perceiving

In an age when we are surrounded by music in excess, our powers of listening are both over- and underchallenged and are administered in that spirit. Our task today is to liberate those powers by penetrating deep into the structure of what we hear. Listening must become perception, it must be deliberately unearthed, delved into, provoked. This, it seems to me, is the true tradition of our western art. Perception is more adventurous and elemental than listening: it plays havoc with our received opinions and securities; it presupposes utmost sensitivity in our intuition and intellect and in all related activities of the mind. For this sort of mind nothing is self- evident. In perceiving an object, it does more than simply apprehend the structure, the constituent resources and laws, and the spirit at work within that object: it also apprehends its own structure by entering into conflict with those very perceptions, thereby becoming all the more acutely aware of itself. (Zum Problem des Strukturalismus, 1990)

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Denial - Aesthetic offer - Beauty

Since temA and Air, my music has been concerned with rigidly constructed denial, with the exclusion of what appears to me as listening expectations preformed by society. The aesthetic offer, the intensity - if one wants - the beauty of music is for me inseparably bound to the efforts with which the composer opposes such pre-determinations in his materials: this is a confrontation with the social reality implicit therein, which he depicts, thereby expressing himself. (Selbstportrait, 1975)

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Fracturing the familiar: Perception as self-recognition

Taken by itself, when we "fracture the familiar" by making ourselves aware of a musical structure, we not only create a state of insecurity but also deliberately introduce an element of "non-music" into a piece. This process is of elemental importance for the act of listening: not until we willingly confront this "non-music" does the act of listening become one of perception. Only then do we "sharpen our ears" and begin to listen in a new way; only then are we reminded that listening and aesthetic behavior, and hence our own sensory faculties, are not immutable. But we are also reminded of the one constant feature in our mental framework, a feature without which none of this would be conceivable: the power of what is called the intellect. Whenever our experience of music touches upon, stretches or violates aesthetic and social taboos, it is transformed into a conflict situation that either leaves people estranged or draws them together. In an age when culture has become a drug, a sedative, a vehicle for the repression rather than the illumination of reality, no art with an awareness of its human responsibilities can afford to do without such conflict situations, provided that they arise of their own accord rather than being staged ad hoc. (Zum Problem des Strukturalismus, 1990)

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Structural thinking

I personally do not believe that one can do without structural thinking. However, structural thinking and its techniques must constantly be put to the proof by confronting them with reality. They must lose themselves, find themselves and define themselves anew. Music only has meaning when it points beyond its own structure to other structures and relation-ships - that is, to realities and possibilities around us and within us. (Vier Grundbestimmungen des Musikhörens, 1979)

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To the historical status of the composer

It seems to me that the immediate cause of actual historic upheavals, outbreaks and revolutions in the arts can be traced to an inner necessity. There is no reason to deny its link with the historical needs of the moment, even though one does not yet fully understand it at this stage. I am a musician, and am unaware of my position as a prophet. Although I try to remain constantly alert, the actual process of creation is too concentrated on itself, in a certain sense too highly compulsive and yet too fragile for it to be concerned with its historic mission. I think that artists would be well advised to turn consciously and cautiously away from all megalomaniac feelings that necessarily arise in this context. (Fragen - Antworten, 1988)

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What I want

... is always the same: a music which, in order to be grasped, does not require a privileged intellectual training, but can rely uniquely upon its compositional clarity and logic; a music which is at the same time the expression and the aesthetic form of a curiosity able to reflect everything - including the illusion of progressiveness. Art as a foretaste of freedom in an age without freedom. (Gespräch mit Ursula Stürzbecher, 1971) (Translation: Roger Clément. - All texts can be found in: Helmut Lachenmann - Musik als existentielle Erfahrung: Schriften 1966-1995, ed. by Josef Häusler, Wiesbaden 1996.)