Time & Perspective Quote by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Performance, for Fischer-Dieskau, is a controlled surrender: you do the work so thoroughly that you can afford to lose your grip on it. The paradox is the point. Preparation is not there to be displayed like a résumé; it’s meant to disappear into the body, the breath, the reflexes. Onstage, “reflection” becomes a liability, not a virtue. Thinking is too slow. Doubt is too loud. Both interrupt the fragile timing between impulse and sound where interpretation actually lives.

Calling it “a new level of unconsciousness” is a sly rebuke to the romantic myth of inspiration arriving out of nowhere. This isn’t mystical trance; it’s engineered instinct. Fischer-Dieskau, famously meticulous about text, phrasing, and psychological detail in Lieder, is admitting that analysis has an expiration date. You interrogate Schubert in the practice room; you stop interrogating when the hall goes quiet. The singer who keeps checking their own work in real time turns art into a self-audit.

The subtext is about trust: trust in craft, in muscle memory, in the collaboration with pianist and composer, in the audience’s attention. It’s also about vulnerability. “Lay aside” reads like a ritual instruction, a way to step past self-consciousness and into presence. Coming from a musician shaped by postwar German culture, it carries a moral edge: seriousness matters, but the point of seriousness is freedom, not paralysis. The ultimate discipline is knowing when to stop controlling and start listening.