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First of all, influences of the Viennese School, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono and Hans Werner Henze. At the moment I prefer the free melodic and harmonic practice with dodecaphony. My principles are expression, sound richness, colour richnes and harmonic formal structure of the compositions. I reject serial and aleatory production of music, as well as slavish academism.
The aim of my work is to write music, which obtains a maximum of diversity and impact with the most economical means, which agitates, affects emotionally and opens your ears. My concern is a very transparent, fine spun, polyphonic, rhythmic set of highly differentiated manners of movement, full of expression. Everything has to serve the expression and should not become an end in itself. I love movement structures for two and three voices (whether chamber music, organ or vocal music), as well as extremely dense, highly polyphonic and polyrhythmic structures. [...]
I think nothing of politically active and manipulative music - but of music that serves the people, music that serves humanity, dealing with the suffering of the people. The work 'De Profundis ... ' [...] includes this intention. [...] Literary religious contents and their relations are the source of my encouragement and inspiration. Apart from that, it should be noted that it is not the task of the composer to write or talk about music, but to write music.

Franz Schreyer 1994/1996