Henze embodies the invisible

The German-born composer Hans Werner Henze lives in Marino near Castel Gandolfo. However, Henze, who turned 80 this summer, was never a musical pope. He is certainly regarded as one of the most important composers of the post-war period, but it cannot be said that he founded a school, and he certainly did not take on the role of artistic high priest, as some of his colleagues and contemporaries tried to do. On the contrary, he was often attacked by those who considered him a renegade because of the modernist purity requirements of the time.

It is a warm day in Henze's house in Marino and it is time to move to the shadier terrace on the other side of the beautiful house with its fantastic gardens. Henze moves slowly through the rooms of the house where he lives with Fausto, who has been his inseparable partner since they met in Rome in the 1960s. He is helped into a wicker armchair and a glass of Guinness is placed by his side.

You have been living in Italy for half a century now; has there always been a longing to come here or was it more a longing to get away from the Germany you grew up in?

"Both. But when I asked myself where I wanted to go, Italy came to mind first. In Germany, Italian culture was present through literature and art. And I love the Italian language"
(He answers thoughtfully, weighing up the words. His eyes are completely hidden behind his dark glasses.)

Do you still remember the difficult times in Germany when you were young?

"Sometimes I remember things... Episodes... that were painful and brutal. I grew up in the middle of the Second World War, I was an unwilling soldier myself and experienced terrible things that made me shudder with disgust. Every day I am grateful to Italy for welcoming me here. But many composers of my generation were committed to German aesthetics, and after the war Germany offered young composers meeting places such as the Darmstadt Summer Courses."

"You were also in Darmstadt in the late 1940s, but in many ways the post-war avant-garde seems to have moved far away from your own understanding of music and the purpose of music?"

"Yes, my colleagues hated my approach. The fact that I wrote operas and put theatre above everything else contributed to this. Opera was seen as reactionary. In an infamous interview, Pierre Boulez said that all opera houses should be blown up."

You have been labelled rather pejoratively as a ‘postmodernist’, which is probably due to your way of mixing different stylistic elements?

"I have this not always accepted love of the classics. Part of it is that I can refer to music from the 18th and 19th centuries to illustrate the new things I want to say. I use musical examples for this, in direct and indirect quotations.”

Is that a technique you like to use, to put the new in relation to tradition and predecessors?

"It's a desire I've always felt, it's like a searchlight pointing the way into the unknown. Tradition is very important. 
Composers, like visual artists and of course writers, are storytellers. We have to entertain, we are encouraged to tell stories. I used to be very much alone in this view, and it's only in the last 20 or 30 years that I've realised how things have changed.

I also know from my own experience that orchestral musicians today are much more open to new music. Fifty years ago, new scores were always met with resistance and strong scepticism."

Composing for theatre and opera has always been a focus, but there are also examples in your instrumental music where there is a text behind the music.

“- Yes, of course. Last year, a new work of mine was performed in Amsterdam: Sebastian im Traum (also performed at the Concert Hall as part of the Composers' Festival). The poem on which it is based is printed in the score. A piece of prose or a poem can build a bridge between one's own feelings and the symbolic power of music.”

Are you currently composing?

“Yes, I am doing so. At the moment I'm fascinated by Phaedra. It will become an opera. But I was very ill last year and couldn't write at all, and now I'm trying to regain the necessary strength.”

That is an arduous task. Henze is obviously marked by age and illness. Last year, he was very ill for a while. Now he is constantly dependent on help. The number of interviews for his 80th birthday, two weeks before we visit him, is very limited. 

The scenery we are sitting in is breathtaking. Yes, in fact, ‘breathtaking’ is actually an understatement: a house that hints at culture in every detail. On one side of the house are 500-year-old olive trees that supply it with its own olive oil. On the other side are inspiring, lushly planted areas with pergolas and a vegetable garden favoured by vegetarians.

Hans Werner Henze has travelled a long way from one culture to another. At the same time, he has travelled through education and social advancement. He grew up in very poor and, as he says, unhappy circumstances in the German countryside in Westphalia.

"It was a very provincial home... There was no music, no theatre, nothing like that at all. And my family was pretty poor. We didn't even have a radio."

Do you remember the moment when you discovered this ‘other’ world, that of art?

"There was a touring cinema showing films to the public, mainly with political propaganda. In a documentary film being shown, Furtwängler conducted Mozart, and I remember that the sound of the orchestra seemed to me to be from a world I longed for. I decided to study music, which I was later able to do with the help of a scholarship."

It was a big step he made. Music became the instrument of inner and outer journeys in Henze's eventful life. Without hesitation, he puts music first among all art forms.

"Because it has the power to touch certain strings in the body. Strong feelings."

Contact with the public is important.

"Yes, it's important to be able to communicate. I've had very good experiences with the public, especially in recent years. Even in Vienna!"

What reactions to your music make you happy?

"Christian Thielemann recently conducted my Tenth Symphony in Berlin. At the end, the audience gave it a standing ovation. That was great. I felt accepted. That's what makes composing meaningful: while you keep searching inwardly, you can still trust that there is an audience waiting to hear your music."

A morning and lunch with Henze are over. He will take an afternoon nap before a new interview begins. He says he is looking forward to the festival in Stockholm, a city he has only visited once before: in February 1977, when he conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in his orchestral work ‘Tristan’, among others.

Now the Stockholm audience can finally get to know Hans Werner Henze personally and experience him in the flesh.

“There is a quote from Leonardo da Vinci that I love, …”

Henze adds in conclusion:

“Music embodies the invisible.”

That is wonderfully put and sums up the meaning of music. It will be a festival week in which this invisible is formulated in music.

(Translation: M. Kerstan)