333:' performed as a radio drama, the message of this mystery play about the suffering of the Jews elicited a deep sense of distress in him. After having visited the author in Stockholm, and after contact with her over period of time, Steffens began working on the libretto himself. The musical expressiveness of this scenic oratorium has been stringently oriented around the text, to pay tribute to the seriousness of the subject matter. In the book
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369:, after the painting by Picasso, is a timeless indictment of the terrors of war and violence, expressed in music. The initial silence at the beginning of the work gradually takes on elements of sound, swelling towards a sonorous crescendo, an ominous audio-pictorial intimation of the approaching fighter-bombers, before the viola intones its elegiac theme. Because of its graphic qualities, the score pages of
415:(Music after Pictures) for over three decades, writes that she knows of no other composer who has so intensively and consistently dedicated himself to setting pictorial images to music. Under the supervision of Fink a project was initiated at the Department of Music at the University of Innsbruck to develop and maintain a comprehensive website devoted to the subject area “Music after Pictures” (see
329:"Following the text closely and interpreting it musically, I put it into sounds," Steffens says of his compositional work with literary texts. As an opera composer he tells stories, he experiences, senses, and feels pictorially and in terms of stage settings. In his work with texts by Nelly Sachs he was especially fascinated by the sophistication of her language. Then, when he heard
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While composing, Steffens maintains an intimate relationship to the instruments and voices he uses. He is intent on projecting "the unalienated sounds of instruments and the human voice in the pure form they have evolved towards over long periods of cultural development and implementation." His own
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during the war, was returned to their home, the young boy was allowed to accompany his father while singing. Walter was given his first music lessons by a woman from the neighborhood. He received his basic musical education from the music director Max
Spindler in Dortmund, and this was supplemented
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as well as music theory under
Wilhelm Maler. "I was only able to convince my father about my plans for a musical career after I had finished my school leaving examinations in MĂĽnster and passed the entrance examinations for the Hamburg University of Music in 1959", Steffens recalls. He began his
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I have tried to recreate in my imagination that haunting feeling—fear, terror, and grief—and to put that all into my music. The suffering is universal and timeless, and so I have acted pluralistically: Everything I could find of historical importance was integrated into the work, to portray the
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individual system of notation mediates between tonality and atonality, which he says opens up a creative domain "providing for sounds, lines, colors and forms which serve to sensually enhance a desired expression." His style has progressed from an atonal phase, when he was working on the opera
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and "was unable to endure smiling," to a language of sounds which enable him to express and convey sensibilities, to "make them singable." While
Steffens’ occupation with this work by Sachs expanded his spectrum of compositional expression, especially with respect to dramatic components, he
273:). "Mixed concordant working process" (Steffens) is based on the composer's own eight-note scale, with scale-related sound patterns. Impressions of his childhood during the war years and his sadness and grief at all the death and destruction were dealt with by Steffens in his composition
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Steffens has noted one essential feature of his musical creativity: "There is always an extra-musical stimulus which has a very intense effect on me, more intense even than only a music-related sensation." He frequently uses literary sources for his compositions—for example works by
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bombers incorporated into the score, together with the inclusion of background sounds of "extreme brutality," transpose traumatic experiences into visual impressions. In the afterword to the score
Steffens writes,
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As a child I lived through bombing raids on
Dortmund, the menacing drone of bomber formations and the jarring terror of low-level strafing attacks. I know well the patterns of horror in
141:. His road to music was a bumpy one, especially since his father could not imagine a career in the fine arts as being a respectable way to earn a living. During the Second World War the
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from 6 July to 22 September 1985, has an appendix with a list of paintings set to music by
Steffens and other composers. Steffens’ orchestral work
421:). Numerous works by Steffens, especially those from recent years, are listed in this database, e.g., musical compositions on pictures by
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115:(born 31 October 1934) is a German composer. He is noted for the diversity of his creative works, but has specialised in
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In addition to literature, the visual arts also provide
Steffens with important sources of inspiration. The book
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to be "an opportunity to concentrate on the configuration of comic parts within a basically lyrical style."
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programme — the evacuation of children from war zones to the countryside — to the village of
Wollenberg in
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When the family was re-united again and the family's piano, which had been stored safely in the
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dramatic sense of terror, fear, chaos, hopelessness, sadness and hope.
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teaching career in 1962 at the
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