Contemporaries
Scherber moved in a different spiritual sphere from the Avantgarde who were composing in the fifties. The latter experimented with technical and electronic media, which led to serial an chance compositions. They wanted to replace all the usual rules for the build up of music with own ways of treatment. Beyond this, they strove to create a world-music through taking in musical elements from as many cultures as possible, appropriate for the scientific-technical-industrial civilization of the whole world. Next to this, many composers continued in the style of composition usual until now.
For Scherber, each tone was an inner act, a free deed - and no intellectual, emotional or instinktive action connected it with other tones. He moved in the world of tone which he opened up as a discoverer does with a new continent, with all its happenings. He loved music and lived it. Music which, he sometimes said, would be inscribed in each human being, even when, in our present time, it is not yet in our personal consciousness. To his F-minor symphony he wrote in 1962 to Peter von Siemens: "I may perhaps suggest, that just this 2nd symphony is not a composition but a Mysterium - also for me! ... Like a prospective mother I experienced the process of bringing it forth, only not so unconsciously; experienced, how those world powers which create mankind, wanted to reveal themselves in an audible way." Here it showed that he was on a spiritual path as a learner. He spoke, as also others of his generation, from an active, new beginning in music which had to be consciously formed and which would lead far above the present classical heights. It was a matter of entering a New World - a source of everything creative, which - not only for music - could be reached under certain conditions. From this comes the consequence, stringency and intelligence of his symphonic language.
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