Nowadays it's enough for Henze when he sits there like that to direct his gaze to the five telegraph wires behind the old wall in order to imagine twelve-tone series in these airy staves. "More and more I would see an E-flat, an F, a C-sharp…" And certain complex polyphonic passages, he says, "I didn't need to check on the piano, they were simply right. That has happened frequently in recent years."
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Suddenly he says: "I think it's good when people don't believe in anything. No religion. With death it's finita la commedia. It makes our life more intense and more intelligent, if we know that. " Full moon over the terrace, the lights of an aeroplane coming in to land flash to the east. That is the route, he says, along which the gods once came.
-- Die Zeit interview with the greatest living composer, il maestro Hans Werner Henze