We met in Paris in 1983 rather by chance, an opportunity I seized so as to add our interview to the three-questions book. I forget whether I subsequently sent Klaus Huber the German transcript, but in the 1990s, when I thought it would be interesting to confront composers with their views expressed in the early 1980s, I did post him the text. Sadly, Professor Huber dragged his feet. We would meet twice a year: in April at the Witten Festival of New Chamber Music and in October at the Donaueschingen Festival. I had to realize eventually that while there was a will, there was apparently no way. I was ready to give up when the German publisher MusikTexte commissioned the Swiss musicologist Max Nyffeler, a former pupil of Huber, to put together a volume of his writings and interviews.

Max Nyffeler succeeded in persuading the composer to revise the text which duly appeared in the book Umgepflügte Zeit. Schriften und Gespräche30 in 1999. Below, you will find my translation of the conversation as published in that volume. The editor devised a title for the text: “Coming to Terms with Man’s Isolation.”

I would like to add that no interview has ever shattered me to the extent this one did, with Professor Huber recalling the scream uttered by his wife as she committed suicide by jumping out of the window. His apparent matter-of-factness in recounting it only added to the devastating effect. I was also shocked by his experiences as a soldier in the Swiss army, infected as it was by Nazi ideology. As a Hungarian, I was moved by his association with StefiGeyer (1888–1956), the object of Bartók’s unrequited love and dedicatee of the first violin concerto of 1907/8. Also, by the fact that Professor Huber attended the world premiere of the Sonata for Two Pianos And Percussion in Basel, on January 16, 1938—he must be one of the last surviving listeners of that historic concert.

I.

I could not single out a composer whose concept would have evoked such a fundamental change in my thinking. I hope it is a permanent process. It is not a question of experiencing a big shock once in your life and from then on composing differently, thereby being spared of any further shocks.