After a number of reminders and keeping my fingers crossed over several years, Helmut Lachenmann eventually addressed himself to revising the text of our interview conducted at his house in 1983. The result is, I think, an important statement by an important composer of our times.

I am particularly struck by Lachenmann’s detailed analysis of his response to Cage and Nono; he goes far beyond stating the fact of their influence. His is the ideal reply I had hoped for from other composers as well.

He also refers to a phenomenon that would justify a book all by itself: the moment of courage which it evidently takes for a creator to make an artistic decision. This is a subject I addressed already in the preface to the Hungarian edition. A daring innovator like John Cage needed the encouragement provided by Rauschenberg’s white paintings to release 4'33'' and this piece in turn gave Lachenmann the courage to “explore the potential of each sound, including extramusical sounds.” Goffredo Petrassi drew courage from Alberto Burri and I could well imagine that Kasimir Malevich, too, had to muster his courage to come out with his White on White series of suprematist paintings in 1917–18.

This could be an indication of the existential loneliness of a creative artist who through a logical development of his ideas over a longer period of time or in a flash of inspiration comes face to face with a product of his imagination which he simply does not dare to present to the world. He needs evidence of at least one like-minded person to mitigate his sense of solitude.

I.

The leap that Lutosławski made had been prepared: Cage’s Piano Concerto only served as an “ignition” to embark on something that was in actual fact already given. Indeed, a pure, radical experience like the music of Cage is something special. If performed without any trimmings, it meant for me, too, a purifying experience. This is true also on a more general level: the encounter with music which is pure in spirit and material puts my senses on alert, I listen intensively and there arise new visions.

I am endowed with a kind of creative mechanism which works all the time and acts like a sensor: it responds to everything which interests me— or rather, which provokes me.