As a former student of Harald Genzmer - I studied under him from 1947 to 1954 in Freiburg in Breisgau - I would like to talk about his universal spirituality, his agility, his immense education in the most diverse fields of knowledge, his roots in literature and the visual arts, as well as his technical expertise. I would like to talk about his artistic sovereignty and tolerance, his understanding of the unusual and substantial, his eye for the essential, the rigour of his judgement and, last but not least, his humanity and the integrity of his character. As a composer, Harald Genzmer pursued and continues to pursue his creative path unflinchingly, open to but critical of everything that goes on around him, unimpressed by everyday fashions, remaining true to himself and his convictions, borne by the moral obligation to make universally valid statements. On his 90th birthday today, I wish the honoured master many more years of unbroken vitality, health and creativity.

Bertold Hummel (in a portrait of Genzmer broadcast on Bavarian Radio on 9 February 1999).

What remains decisive is the fact that Bertold Hummel can do something and, as an artist, is a personality who has kept a clear head in the turmoil of the times.

Harald Genzmer (1 March 1961)

Works by Bertold Hummel that are connected with Harald Genzmer:

5 Bagatelles for 6 clarinets, op. 28 (1965)

Internet Symphony for large orchestra on themes by Harald Genzmer, composed by Bertold Hummel, Roland Leistner-Mayer and Moritz Eggert (1999)

Biography

Harald Genzmer is one of the most important German composers of this century. Always sceptical of the dogmas of the avant-garde movements and akin to his teacher Paul Hindemith in this respect, as an artist he stands for music that aims to appeal directly to players and listeners. "Music should be vital, artistic and understandable. It should win over the performer as practicable, and then the listener as comprehensible." Thus Genzmer himself about his attitude. Genzmer was born in Bremen on 9 February 1909. He received decisive impulses for his artistic path through his encounter with the work of Paul Hindemith, with whom he began to study composition in Berlin in 1928. After extensive activities in various areas of musical life, Genzmer was finally appointed as a teacher of composition at the newly founded Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg i.Br. in 1946. In 1957, he was appointed Professor of Composition in Munich, where he has lived ever since. Genzmer was and is a passionate teacher, and he can draw on an unusual and diverse compositional oeuvre, an enormous knowledge of the history of music, borne of admiration and reverence, a masterly creative ability and compositional craftsmanship as well as an astonishing knowledge of other disciplines, be it literature, the fine arts or the natural sciences. He was influenced by many composers such as Debussy, Hindemith, Bartók and Stravinsky, but as a composer he found his own style, his own language, which he characterised in an astonishing number of works. In fact, Genzmer's catalogue of works is unusually rich, encompassing orchestral works, vocal compositions and chamber music for all instruments. It is striking how important the concerto genre and the concertante style were for the composer. For Genzmer, the individuality of the musician and the characteristics of the various instruments unfold and reveal themselves most clearly in the concerto. Harald Genzmer is characterised by an admirable knowledge of these possibilities and a respectful empathy for the task assigned to the musician. Added to this are an almost inexhaustible imagination and a vitality in discovering and exploring creative experimental possibilities, which lend his music its own liveliness and colourful sound. "The principle of composing is also a service to people" - Genzmer once said. (Edition Peters)

Prof. Harald Genzmer in conversation with Siegfried Mauser (broadcast by Bayern Alpha 09.02.1999, 8.15 p.m.)

Mr Mauser: Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome you to Alpha-Forum. Our guest today is the composer Harald Genzmer. Mr Genzmer, you were born on 9 February 1909, making you 90 years old and a contemporary witness of this century in the truest sense of the word. You were not only interested in music, but also in a wide range of cultural phenomena. In our conversation today, I would first like to talk about your artistic development and your life story. Then - interspersed with three musical examples - I would like to talk about your work and your stylistic development. Mr Genzmer, music has shaped your life - relatively early on, in my opinion. Did you actually come from a musical family or from a family that was very culturally and intellectually orientated?

Prof Genzmer: Yes, my mother played the piano well, just as a layman plays the piano well. But even as a child, I was familiar with the names Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. My mum played the piano, and as a child I used to crawl under the piano and listen to her. She would play one of Beethoven's easier sonatas, for example, and I would take part in it as a child. Of course, I didn't know whether it was Beethoven, Haydn or Mozart. My father played the harmonium - just as a layman plays the harmonium. But he had had a few lessons and also played pieces by Karg-Elert.

Mr Mauser: But nobody was a professional musician. But there was probably a very strong fundamental interest in music.

Prof Genzmer: There was a fundamental interest, both from my mother, who had had good piano lessons - just as a layman could have good piano lessons... My father was actually a lawyer, but he became famous through the Edda translation. That means he was also a Germanist, but in those days you couldn't get a professorship for something like that. So music was something quite natural and self-evident in my parental home that you didn't even have to talk about: it was simply done. When my father came home from work, he played the harmonium.

Mr Mauser: It was part of the atmosphere in the house.

Prof Genzmer: Yes, it was simply part of the atmosphere in the house. There was no big talk about it - it just happened.

Mr Mauser: If one studies your biography, one realises that your life story involved very frequent changes of location in the early days.

Prof Genzmer: That was because my father was a lawyer. He was first an assessor in Blumenthal, in Arolsen, later in Posen. Then he came to Berlin and then to Rostock. Rostock became important to me because it was there that I heard an orchestra for the first time. As a child, it was of course a tremendous thing for me to be allowed to go to an orchestral concert. I wasn't used to that kind of thing and didn't really know what it was. To my surprise, I heard Richard Strauss's "Alpine Symphony" there: that was the first orchestral work I had ever heard. Of course, it made a huge impression on me as a child. I begged and begged, as a child can only beg, to be allowed to go again the next Sunday, because the work was repeated that day. I went again and was completely surprised that I knew every note. I didn't even realise that I was gifted in music. Because we didn't talk about it at home.

Mr Mauser: When did you decide to take up music professionally?

Prof Genzmer: That came later. I went to organ concerts as a child, which I got into for free. I listened to pieces by Bach and Reger there. Those were the composers you could hear at a church concert. Of course, I also heard "Hänsel und Gretel" at the opera, "Lohengrin" by Wagner and "Zar und Zimmermann" by Lortzing: I can still remember that because it was part of the repertoire in Rostock at the time. I went to these concerts full of enthusiasm. But at that time I didn't think at all that I would one day take up music as a profession. That only came much later. It all came in Marburg. It came about in Marburg because I earned my pocket money by playing dance music. I had a colleague in class who was good at playing the violin...

Mr Mauser: Marburg was your father's next stop?

Prof Genzmer: Yes, that was my father's next stop, because he had been appointed to the University of Marburg. He later became rector there. As I said, I played a lot of dance music there. My parents then realised that I was very interested in music and took part in concerts, for example, with great enthusiasm. In Marburg, for example, the "Busch Quartet" or Serkin, who played Reger's Bach Variations etc., played for me. Those were really tremendous impressions for me. I also had very good theory lessons with Stephani, the university music director there. I still think back to these lessons with gratitude today, because they enabled me to pass the entrance exam at the university with flying colours. I was simply very well prepared.

Mr Mauser: The musical memory that you possess to an extraordinary degree is something you already noticed when listening to the "Alpine Symphony": the ability to remember and the concentration.

Prof. Genzmer: I was very surprised when I realised that, because I didn't know that you could recognise it. I was completely surprised that I knew every note: I knew exactly, now comes this part and now comes that part, now comes an oboe solo and so on.

Mr Mauser: That was probably a kind of key experience for you.

Prof Genzmer: Yes, that was a key experience for me, but I didn't know that it was a key experience. I had no idea about it, because I was as harmless as a child can be - I was maybe 12 or 13 years old at the time.

Mr Mauser: Berlin became the decisive city for your professional training in the 1920s. Berlin was one of the cultural metropolises of the world at the time, perhaps even the cultural metropolis of Europe. It was there that you had the decisive encounter, the lessons, the dialogue and the contact with Paul Hindemith.

Prof Genzmer: Yes, with Paul Hindemith. I had money from playing Schlager: I earned 1.50 marks an hour every Saturday: that was a lot of money back then. After ten hours, I'd come home at six o'clock at night with 15 marks, where I'd naturally go to bed. That gave me the money I needed to travel to Giessen. I had a few piano lessons with the university music director there, and he said to me: "Hindemith is coming next week, he's a very good composer. I think you'll be interested. Why don't you go and see him?" Since I had had very good lessons with Stephani, as I said, I was also able to read a score, at least a string quartet score by Haydn or Beethoven etc. I went there with the score. I went there with the score in my hand and listened to it. I naturally believed, naively as I was as a child, that all the other listeners also had a score with them and would also read it with interest. I read the first page with interest and realised that it was all wrong and that it was different from what I was used to. I was so captivated that I stopped reading and just listened. At the end of the concert I was of course the wildest clapper in the hall and shouted "Bravo" and so on: Just the way a child reacts.

Mr Mauser: That was a concert with the "Amar Quartet".

Prof Genzmer: Yes, that was a concert with the Amar Quartet. Hindemith himself played the viola. They also played a string quartet by Schubert and a quartet by Debussy. And they played Opus 22 by Hindemith himself, which is one of the most beautiful string quartets he ever composed. He himself played the viola marvellously. There is also a lot for viola in this piece.

Mr Mauser: So you first got to know Hindemith as an interpreter of his own work.

Prof Genzmer: Yes, I heard him as an interpreter of his own work. As I had money, I bought the sheet music full of curiosity. I bought whatever I could buy. I also bought a magazine called "Melos", which was published at the time. In it I read the names Bartók, Stravinsky and Schönberg, and what they were all called.

Mr Mauser: Hindemith was regarded as a musical bourgeois terror, especially in the twenties. The string quartet Opus 22 in particular, which you have just mentioned, was regarded as one of the pieces in which a new musical language and a new world were developed. When you heard it as a young person, did you have the feeling that this was a new path?

Prof. Genzmer: Yes, of course I realised that it was something completely different. As I said, I already knew a Reger score. Reger himself had played the sonatinas on the piano. So these were definitely works that I knew at the time. But I already realised that this was something completely different. Of course I was on fire for these things, I bought Bartók's Suite for piano and played it quite well. I also played Schönberg's Piano Pieces Opus 19. I was friends with Emil von Behring at the time: he was a son of the famous doctor and played the violin very well. We gave a house concert at Stephani's with modern music. I remember that we played Bartók's second violin sonata: not all the movements, but the first movement. Then we played Hindemith's Opus 11, the second sonata in D major, but only the first two movements. I also played the piano pieces Opus 19 by Schönberg, which are not so difficult, and two or three movements - I can't remember exactly - from Bartók's suite.

Mr Mauser: That's a collection of the classics of modern music.

Prof Genzmer: Yes, but of course I didn't know all that at the time. But they were something very exciting for me and something I was interested in. Stephani understood this, even though I had received very good lessons in classical harmony from him. Of course, he also liked having a young person who was so passionately interested in these things.

Mr Mauser: How long after this experience in Giessen did it take you to start your studies in Berlin?

Prof Genzmer: I had initially taken two more semesters at the University of Marburg an der Lahn. That included art history. As I said, I had also studied harmony with Stephani - and also practised the beginnings of counterpoint. I did this according to "Draeseke", which was a well-known textbook at the time. Then, if I'm not mistaken, I went to Berlin in 1928. I came to Hindemith a little late, in May, because I had been ill, and he said to me, I still remember it clearly: "Listen, I have to tell you one thing straight away: I don't make modern music, I work properly!" I said in astonishment: "But that's exactly why I come to you." "Oh, well," he said, "then everything's fine."

Mr Mauser: What were the composition lessons like there?

Prof Genzmer: At first, we simply continued to work on counterpoint in a class that also included minor subject students. Of course, Hindemith soon realised that I was talented and interested in composition. I joined the composition class perhaps a year later. There was also a pupil of Zoltán Kodály there. Wittelsbach, who studied piano with Schnabel, was also in the class. He would later become the director of the music school and conservatory in Zurich. So there was already a group of young people there...

Mr Mauser: So you weren't immediately admitted to the composition class, but you...

Prof Genzmer: That's right, you first worked properly on counterpoint. I did assignments for that, and Hindemith noticed that I also did free assignments: I didn't just do abstract four-part counterpoint, but perhaps for violin, clarinet, viola and cello or something like that. I did that of my own free will. Hindemith then realised that I was interested in something like that. As a result, I ended up in the composition class.

Mr Mauser: I think two things are particularly important in your music. On the one hand, the instrument is always elementary. Your music, as far as I know it, is always specific to this instrument, in terms of sound and playing technique. And there is something characteristic about it: your pieces always have a very special characteristic based on a certain gesture and a certain expressive attitude. Perhaps we would like to play a short piece at this point to get an impression of the sound. I would suggest that we first listen to a piece that has a title, namely "Meditation": it is the first piece from the studies composed in 1965.

Prof Genzmer: Yes, that was 30 years ago. (Mr Mauser plays Harald Genzmer's Studies for Piano Two Hands, Book II, Meditations)

Mr Mauser: We recorded this expressive piano piece before our conversation. As you said, it was over 30 years ago. Nevertheless, it is a typical Genzmer, because a further characteristic of your tonal language and your compositional path is certainly that a great uniformity spans the entire oeuvre. Like many important composers, you have ultimately remained true to yourself. What you compose today also stands in a certain context to the musical language that existed for you 30 years ago. When did you actually feel that you had found your own musical language, so that you could say that you were a composer and had something unique and special to say?

Prof Genzmer: That is something very simple at first. When I was a student, I was not only a pupil of Hindemith, but also of Curt Sachs. Curt Sachs was this important instrumentalist who unfortunately had to leave in 1933. I have him to thank for introducing me to the various instruments. Then I also had lessons, and very good ones at that, in clarinet. So that means I also knew the wind instruments. If you can play the clarinet, you soon know your way around the saxophone and the other woodwind instruments. I could also play the recorder. For example, I premièred Hindemith's trio together with Hindemith himself at the music day in Plön.

Mr Mauser: And we mustn't forget the piano.

Prof Genzmer: I had piano lessons with Rudolf Schmied. This piece that you have just played, which has these hesitant, plaintive chords: With it, I wanted to write piano pieces that are not so difficult, but also accessible to a layman who wants to engage with modern music. You certainly played it very beautifully, but it can also be played by a layman who is interested in modern music and can play the piano well. Because there is a lot of it.

Mr Mauser: That is also something that connects you with your teacher Hindemith: on the one hand, demanding virtuoso concert music, and on the other hand - which need not be mutually exclusive, but perhaps even complement each other fruitfully - music for the enthusiast, for the layman and also for children, who are supposed to grow into a new musical world. That was never really a problem or a tension for you, it was something that naturally had something to do with each other.

Prof Genzmer: There were reasons for that. After my studies, I went to the opera in Wroclaw. There I was first a répétiteur and later director of studies. A director of studies is someone who has to take care of the whole operation behind the scenes, so to speak. I was also in charge of everything in the orchestra. I played the organ, harmonium, celesta, piano, harpsichord, in other words, everything that came up on the keyboard. You often only found out in the morning what you had to play in the evening. I remember, for example, that I was once asked to play the celesta in Richard Strauss' "Josephslegende". I didn't know the piece by Strauss at all. But you weren't asked if you could do it. Or you can't, in which case you're no good. Of course I looked at the sheet music, I sat down at the celesta in the evening and played it. And suddenly I realised that I had a big solo to play. Of course, it's a bit nerve-wracking at a time like that to just keep playing and not make a face. The whole orchestra naturally looked at me and thought: "Now let's see how he does it!" As it worked and worked well, I was naturally well received. I also became head of studies because I was simply useful for the institute. For example, I was also adept at the piano, i.e. I could sight-read a piano reduction of Richard Strauss quite well. I was not a solo pianist like you, Mr Mauser, but I was reasonably skilful at the piano, so I was able to help myself.

Mr Mauser: Your pupils always particularly appreciated the fact - we'll come back to your pedagogical skills later - that you had virtually everything from the entire traditional literature at your fingertips or "en passant" when the sheet music was available. I remember that very well. But after studying with Hindemith as a director of studies, your career was initially that of a practical musician, if you like. What was the relationship between this early career at an opera house, a theatre, and your own compositional ambitions? After all, you wanted to be a composer first and foremost.

Prof Genzmer: I really wanted to be a composer. Of course, I also wrote theatre music for the theatre because they noticed that I was useful for it: for example, incidental music for "Prince of Homburg", which I conducted myself, of course, and which was then performed thirty times. I also composed incidental music for other plays that are of no interest today. Back then, of course, I wasn't asked what I wanted on these or those instruments. Instead, it was about what was available. I remember the "Prince of Homburg", for example: two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, a bass tuba and percussion. I simply had to write incidental music for it. You can do that, or you can't. It wasn't asked for. Of course I could do it, and it wasn't a problem for me. I also remember that a colleague at the time pointed out to me that there was a society for musical performance rights - it was called STAGMA at the time - because I had no idea about such a thing. Hindemith had never spoken about such a thing either. I went there and said that this incidental music had already been performed thirty times. Whereupon I was told that I could enter. That was the first time I went to this company. I had also become interested in Oskar Sala - already in Berlin. Oskar Sala had developed the trautonium together with Professor Trautwein. And many of the sounds that you have just played in the piece were inspired by sounds that are possible on the trautonium.

Mr Mauser: Perhaps we should explain that in a little more detail, because it may not be so familiar to our audience. If you think about it, you were also a pioneer in the development of electronic music. After all, the trautonium was one of the first electronic instruments. Together with Hindemith, you were one of the first composers to write pieces for this new type of instrument. At the time, there was a spirit of optimism in this circle in Berlin towards new worlds of sound, towards very unusual things as an alternative to traditional instruments. I think that was a serious experience in terms of consciousness.

Prof Genzmer: Of course I was very interested in that. I was friends with Sala. We were the only guests allowed to visit Hindemith in his flat. We often talked about such things there: what was possible and how such an instrument could be developed. Hindemith also often advised Professor Trautwein. The trautonium is an instrument with strings that can be tuned in different ways. It can be played from the highest to the lowest registers. Back then, it was a kind of violin that went all the way down to the double bass. I had already written various pieces for Sala back then in Wroclaw. I then came to Berlin and there I found a final version for the first trautonium concerto, which today, because Sala has turned more to film music, has thankfully been preserved on record: there is a CD with this concerto. The piece was performed very prominently in the "Berliner Philharmonie". The director of the "Berliner Philharmonie" was understanding of this, and Schuricht naturally conducted the performance excellently. Sala had been a real virtuoso. He had already played piano concertos with orchestra as a schoolboy. As a schoolboy! He played it really excellently back then. Of course, it caused quite a stir, and it was with this piece that I first made a name for myself, as they say.

Mr Mauser: Was that a work that also played an important role in terms of making a name for itself?

Prof Genzmer: It was performed in many cities at the time. When the Third Reich was over, it was also performed again. In 1952, I composed a second piece, a piece for mixed trautonium, which also contained new sounds that could no longer be written down in notes. This is on the other side of this CD, so that people can still get an impression of this piece today. It was premiered very well by "Südwestfunk" at the time, with Rosbaud on the podium. This piece was also played in many other cities, for example in the "Berliner Philharmonie", where Sawallisch conducted it. Conductors like this were therefore committed to it at the time. Sala then turned his attention to completely different things: He was so interested in this new world of sound that he turned mainly to film. He later created a kind of new sound world for Hitchcock's "The Birds", because it was no longer music in the usual sense.

Mr Mauser: Today we call it a "soundtrack". Looking over your work - we have now inevitably and seamlessly come to the composer Genzmer, who is of course connected to your life story - one has to realise that you are one of the few universalists among composers, as was the case with your teacher Paul Hindemith. There is music by you for almost every genre, every combination of instruments: there is also orchestral music and, in many cases, concertos. Only one genre is missing - and that seems particularly surprising to me because you were particularly involved with this genre when you started your career, namely opera. Why is there no opera by Harald Genzmer?

Prof Genzmer: I can't answer that. You know, you always know very little about yourself, I say that quite openly. Perhaps there is no opera because I couldn't find any material that really interested me. I was often asked why I wouldn't write an opera. I was also often encouraged to do so, but I was never able to decide to write a real opera. I once wrote a little dance play and so on. But I'm simply not cut out for opera: It's a different world. A composer from our time, such as Hans Werner Henze, writes operas because that is simply his world. But it's not mine. Of course, Henze also writes pieces for concertos and symphonic works. Richard Strauss is a famous example of a man who wrote marvellous operas and great symphonic works - but very little chamber music.

Mr Mauser: Instrumental music is your own field, although you also write wonderful choral and vocal music. Your literary inclination is also something very important that stands in the background. Nevertheless, instrumental virtuosity in both lyrical and dramatic music is something very characteristic of you. Perhaps we would like to listen to a short and typical virtuoso piece by Harald Genzmer as a second audio example. We are listening to a Presto from the "Dialogues" from 1963, which we also recorded here before our conversation. (Mr Mauser plays: Dialogues for piano, Presto by Harald Genzmer)

Prof Genzmer: I can simply say about this piece that I once wanted to write a staccato piece. And you played it marvellously - just as I would have thought.

Mr Mauser: This virtuoso two-part writing is actually the principle of these dialogues: an interplay between the two hands, between two voices. Virtuoso two-part writing is also something that Hindemith was very interested in: the transparent movement in which the two voices can be grasped in their individuality and yet in a precise relationship. I think that comprehensibility, audibility and the linguistic character of music in general - that people feel addressed by music in a human sense and are not overwhelmed by excessive complexity - is probably something that has always determined your composing in the background.

Prof Genzmer: Yes, there is something else too. I was in Wroclaw and left Wroclaw because I didn't want to join the "brown club". I then went to Berlin. There I worked with amateurs at the adult education centre and wrote pieces that these amateurs could actually play. For example, for three violins: There is a playbook for three violins. Or there are pieces that I wrote later, like the Sinfonietta, which was played a lot. I learnt that back then. You can only learn that by working with amateurs. I myself often accompanied Oskar Sala when he played the trautonium. There were two men at the radio station at the time, Bruno Aulich and Willi Stech, who were very interested in it and therefore gave me the opportunity to play with Sala. Then I also arranged things for Otto Dobrindt, i.e. for the entertainment orchestra - and for trautonium and small orchestra.

Mr Mauser: In addition to your growing success as a composer, both on the pedagogical and virtuoso track and on the concert track, music education was actually the important third level on which you worked professionally.

Prof Genzmer: That was only later. During the Third Reich, it was said at the Berlin university where that would have been conceivable: "He won't cross our threshold!" After this period was over in 1946, Gustav Scheck, the great flautist who had just founded the university in Freiburg, asked me if I would like to come to this university because he needed a deputy director. I agreed and went there. There I also composed all sorts of things for Scheck, such as flute sonatas and so on. There was also a flute concerto that Scheck often played. Very good piano players were also brought there, such as Carl Seemann, who was very active on our behalf at the time. I wrote this Suite in C, this virtuoso piece, for him. It was actually at the suggestion of the French: they were not playing for the occupying power, but were culturally interested in us. They behaved in a completely natural human way and said to us: "Listen, we're organising an exhibition of modern painting." Back then, names that everyone recognises today, such as Picasso or Léger etc., were still completely new. "Why don't you write a modern piece for it?" That's when I wrote this piece in C, which Seemann premièred for this exhibition. And it has since been performed by many others.

Mr Mauser: That brings us to the large-scale virtuoso music, the concert music. The Suite in C is one of the virtuoso pieces for piano. You have repeatedly written important works for the piano. Perhaps we can now listen to the first movement, slow introduction, moderato and allegro, of the fifth piano sonata from 1985, in which this large-scale concert and virtuoso music is particularly clear and fascinating. (Mr Mauser plays Harald Genzmer's Fifth Sonata for Piano, Moderato Allegro)

Prof Genzmer: Yes, the composer can only say "thank you", because that's exactly how he imagined the piece.

Mr Mauser: Thank you very much. But the main centre of your teaching activities was Munich, where you worked for many years as a professor of composition. Did teaching and instructing young people actually have an effect on your own composing?

Prof Genzmer: Yes, it did. That was also the case apart from the fact that I was friends with many colleagues such as, to mention just one name as representative of many, the organist Professor Lehrndorfer, who premiered most of my organ works, or Professor Höhenrieder, who played my Suite in C very often. Many other colleagues could also be mentioned here. By talking to young people, for example, I came up with the idea of writing a mass that is easy to sing. This mass was also played for the first time at a church concert in Munich. That's because we had been working on the Hindemith Mass. The Hindemith Mass is compositionally very interesting and very good, but very difficult, so that it can only be sung by very few choirs. I deliberately wanted to compose a mass that could be interpreted by any good amateur choir and by any organist who can play the organ well - and not just by the great virtuosos. That simply came about through contact with the students, because I had church musicians of both denominations in my lessons. It came about through this contact. The première was in Vienna.

Mr Mauser: Perhaps as a final question, dear Mr Genzmer, one about the creative process: How do you actually compose? Is the idea particularly important or the elaboration? The rhythmic-motoric side is very important in the virtuoso pieces. How does your music come about? Are there sketches, for example?

Prof Genzmer: Yes, let me give you an example. I was asked by Ireland to write a piece for the choir festival in Ireland. I searched for texts for a long time until a friend drew my attention to the poetry book "The Irish Harp". I had the book of poems in front of me and read it until I finally realised that I was going to compose these five pieces. But how was I supposed to compose them? I had no idea. I lay down at the table to rest for a while, then suddenly it came to me and I had found the style. I already knew exactly how the piece should go. Then I quickly wrote it down in pencil in a notebook. Over the next few days, it was just a question of working it out, which I could do at any time because I had always felt confident in my craft. It's different when you write a piece for a special instrument. For example, I was once asked to write a piece for bass tuba. The player rang me and I told him to write me a letter. The letter was so nice that I said to myself: "I'd love to work with this man." Then I first made sketches for the bass tuba and sent him these ideas. I wanted to write a piece that wasn't as difficult for the bass tuba as the famous concerto by Williams. I wanted to write a piece that anyone who could play the bass tuba well could play. He then wrote back that it was easy to play and could be played even faster. But I didn't want that at all. And then I finished the piece according to the sketches. That's how this piece for bass tuba came about.

Mr Mauser: Good, so inspiration and elaboration are of great importance.

Prof Genzmer: Yes, but that happens unconsciously, because you don't have it in your hands. You don't even know how it works. You just suddenly have it.

Mr Mauser: Thank you very much for this stimulating discussion, Mr Genzmer. Ladies and gentlemen, that was Alpha Forum. I would also like to thank you very much for listening and watching.