When we met in Budapest in 1980, Gerhard Wimberger was a prominent figure in Austrian musical life: a professor of conducting and composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, he was also associated with the festival, sat on important committees, received major prizes, and was elected a member of the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. His music was also broadcast regularly on Austrian Radio; I remember in particular his Ausstrahlungen W. A. Mozart’scher Themen (1978)—in English: Radiations of W. A. Mozartian Themes—under his baton.

In the three decades that have passed since, Wimberger has more or less disappeared from public life and concert programs. He is not the only composer to have been forgotten in his lifetime but of course one never knows: we may just be experiencing a lull to be followed by a renaissance of his music.

I.

I belong to the ill-fated generation whose youth was overshadowed by Hitler’s Reich. My musical development was likewise determined by history. I remember, around 1940, my piano teacher locked the door of his studio and under promise of secrecy produced a score from his cupboard: it was a viola piece by Paul Hindemith who had been blacklisted by the Nazis. Another teacher told me of Stravinsky: it was as if he had evoked a mirage—distant and unattainable.

After the war when traveling was free, I was not yet in a position to do so. That is why Ernst Krenek made such a deep impression: in 1952 or 1953, in the Salzburg Mozarteum, he delivered a lecture on twelve-tone music. I had until then composed in an angular Hindemith style, tonal music with many fourths and fifths; it was Krenek who made me realize that there was another way of selecting tones as well. By the time I visited Darmstadt in 1955 (that was the only time I attended the Summer Courses), the music I heard there did not hold much interest, since I was also composing with twelve tones.

After a time I bade farewell to that technique but I owe it to Krenek that he liberated me from the world in which I had lived until then. Under the influence of that experience I composed differently in a harmonic and melodic sense—the rhythmic aspect of my thinking, however, remained unchanged.