My grandfather was not a musician but he was an artist - a painter, a decorative painter.

I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony.

However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons.

In January 1944 I was called up by the Forced Labor Service, but I deserted on October 10, 1944.

There was a very famous musician in our family. He was a great violinist, an internationally known teacher. He was Leopold Auer.

I think it was when I was nineteen, by that time the Jewish laws were already in force and the split was beginning to come about which isolated the Jewish culture.

I only want to give a metaphysic for my music.