Eberhard Schoener crosses borders, leaves his past behind, and then returns to it. He approaches music without prejudice, exposes himself to foreign influences, and begins again, perfectly sure where he wants to go, on his own road. It is, indeed, difficult to describe his work: there is such an array of varying compositions, projects and events.

Eberhard Schoener has received classical training as a musician and composer (North-west-German Music Academy in Detmold). But the times were unsettling and so was he. He could, or would, not commit to any pursuit or style, he did think he could find new ways but did not want to find himself in the elite niche of the so-called New Music. "Composers, then and now, tend to think of themselves and express themselves on an intellectual level only - feelings were taboo." Among his undertakings then was the recording of the h-moll-Suite by Bach on a Moog Synthesizer - considered nothing short of sacrilege, attempted a contemporary interpretation of the Coronation Mass by Mozart in a collaboration between the Rock Band Deep Purple and the Boys' Choir of Tölz. The Avantgarde as well as the Classical Music adherents were both alienated and shocked. It was apparent that he did not belong to any one group. But he was carving out his very own style.

His musical development found its match not in Europe but in the USA. Composers such as Steve Reich, Phil Glass, Meredith Monk and later Tom Waits - free of the European Culture constraints - found their material in the classical music of Europe, combined it with Jazz, rock music and electronic music. What emerged was contemporary music, intermittently sentimental (Lessing has translated sentimental with sensitive), and sometimes naïve. The new breed of musicians was not shy to use clichés.

Eberhard Schoener felt a kinship to the ease and confidence with which feelings were applied (every cliché begins with a breakthrough into new dimensions of experience). Meetings with Laurie Andersen, concerts like a Brecht/Weill evening with Sting, Gianna Nannini, Jack Bruce and the Hamburg State Opera Orchestra or a satellite simulcast of the world fair in Tsukuba featuring musicians in Japan and Munich playing simultaneously and where Nina Hagen sang Opera Arias accompanied by the Tokyo Philharmonic, or recordings with Willi deVille, opened the doors of the classical music establishment. All in all: the compositions by Eberhard Schoener (especially his Short Operas "Cold Genius", "Palazzo dell'Amore, "Beleza Negra" and "A Nemesis") confirmed his affinity to the composing technique of American composers. In Virtopera, then, a network-opera-in- progress, Eberhard Schoener puts the wealth of his experience as conductor, film composer and event organizer together in this project, which is designed to become the concept-art for the new medium Internet.

But even now, with a firm commitment to form and content, Eberhard Schoener finds a way to go new ways. In his mind, all our old communication models supporting theater, film and western science are built around linear and logical concepts. This kind of thinking reflects emphasis on causality. The concept of causality was borrowed, in medieval times, from ancient Greek philosophy and mythology. Schoener feels that the Internet is providing options to produce new connections and to create nothing short of a new "inner world sanctum" (Goethe). The idea here is to engage in bold, unadulterated perception and to apply it methodically, thereby producing the instant "everything at once character" - a product of the information society, where voice, printed word, image and sensory stimulation are happening simulateneously: Music, figures, text, information are connected via layered strata (piles, stacks) rather than via processes of sequential occurrences. This particular idea constitutes a veritable challenge for Schoener, who has always tried to figure out and/or establish context.

As has happened to many artists at the end of the last millennium, Schoener did not commit himself to one specific form of art. He organized concerts, designed to appeal to the younger audience (including six Classic Rock nights for Eurovision), thereby counteracting what he perceived to be a reluctance in the younger audience to go to classical music concerts. He composed and directed "Nightshift", a multi-media-event staged at the closed-down steel-mill in Neunkirchen (Saarland), the music for the opening ceremony of the gymnast world championship in Stuttgart, where musicians from five continents played live via satellite with musicians in the Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadium, and he composed the music for the opening of the Potzdamer Platz in Berlin (1998).

For Eberhard Schoener, who feels that music in connection with other art forms expresses his time, film and television are fascinating. He wrote the music to films and TV-series, with a keen intent to avoid covering the picture with stylish or fashionable sound mush and instead compose with dramaturgy in mind.

His Internet project VirtOpera gives him a chance to apply his vast experience as a multi-media artist and to merge a variety of musical principles. VirtOpera is his biggest challenge yet.