Micro Music Laboratories, Symphonic Music 08

Symphonic Music
Peter Huebner comments on his Symphonic Creation page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

As already mentioned, Haydn was irritated by the way in which others in the field of symphonic creation placed one little piece of music after the other, and he demanded of his music that it not “break off when it had hardly begun”.
He quite deliberately ordered the music to meet the ethical requirement that “something must remain in the heart”.

In musical creation, he demanded that the music be anchored in the heart of the theme or motif and that,
at any time and in any musical time, it gained its life from this heart.

“He who is still
so lacking in Humanity
is not free
to enjoy civil Liberty.”

Schiller

He saw this phenomenon – like Mozart and Beethoven later would – as the most important criteria of all things symphonic: the thematic work from and with the theme or the motif, a work which was not a matter of placing in series numerous ideas, but of thematic concen-tration and intensification.

He revealed this principle impressively in his Sun Quartet, where he ventured through the theme and the motif to the interval – that is, he worked forward systematically in line with the natural structures of the microcosm of music.

Thus it is then no coincidence that – concurrent with Johann Sebastian Bach, by the way – also these three later great masters of music – Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven – recognised and implemented the fugue and the thematic work with the smallest musical units as the best means for the intensification and the integration of the musical evolution for the benefit of natural humanity.

“Talent works,
Genius creates.”

Schumann

The counterpointing of the smallest musical element with itself opened the door to musical works in which no musical time stood in isolation, but instead everything was related to the whole.

The intended aim was an ever greater intensification and integration of all musical elements – particularly the smallest and simplest.

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