One of the composer's most basic skills is concentration. What I mean by this is that the composer must have the skill to concentrate not only consciously, but also subconsciously: to be able to focus one's attention on the purely abstract, primary impulse in the subconscious. From a logical point of view, focusing our attention is conscious, but this does not happen concretely, because the impulse of a work is often given by a conception that you cannot define. It is a kind of “sensation-attitude” that can be exact, despite the fact that its nature and significance are unclear.

For me, this conception is often plastic, and I am still unable to define a shape, form, or proportion; it is something I can somehow merely touch. It is a feeling for the whole, which I would describe like trying to capture a broad stretch of landscape in our sight. As long as we do not focus on a specific point or detail, we see nothing altogether. But with a multitude of details, we are able to reconstruct the landscape concretely and retain it and etch it in our memory. And with the help of memory, we can fill in other landscapes, but it is always the detail from which we start and onto which we focus our attention. Even though the entire horizon is visible from our point of view, only that part upon which we focus our attention is visible; everything around it is worked out visually through habit, memory, and experience. Thus the question is whether we can really grasp the whole as such, or if we can only put together the parts in our minds.

This feeling for the whole is at the foundation of the musical work. But this does not mean that I already know or feel what the entire work will look like, not even the form, much less that I have found a motive—all of this is on the path to realization. We can ask ourselves, why did composers look for a specific motive, change it, or discard it? Because they were looking for what corresponded with their conception of the whole.