Themes archive

Zu allen Zeiten haben Künstler die Nacht enthusiastisch besungen – das erste Thema der styriarte, die sich in den Jahren zuvor einzelnen Komponisten gewidmet hat.

Für die Menschen der Renaissance öffnete die Nacht im Traum die Pforten des Himmels, in der Melancholie die Abgründe der Seele. Für die höfische Gesellschaft des Barock und Rokoko wurde sie zum illuminierten Festsaal unendlicher sommerlicher Verngügen. Die Romantiker entdeckten in ihr die Nachtseiten der menschlichen Existenz und mehr. Vielfältig und weitläufig also ist das Netz der Beziehungen zwischen Nacht und Musik.

Das Motto dazu lieferte William Shakespeare mit seiner Komödie A Midsummer Nights's Dream. Bildet diese quasi den Brennpunkt des Programms, so ist wie bisher Nikolaus Harnoncourt die künstlerische Zentralfigur des Festivals. Er nähert sich dem Shakespeare-Stoff in zwei ganz verschiedenen Deutungen: in Mendelssohns Schauspielmusik zum Sommernachtstraum und in Purcells schönstem Bühnenwerk, The Fairy Queen. Mit Mendelssohns Erster Walpurgisnacht präsentiert Harnoncourt das dämonische Gegenbild zum Sommernachtstraum, und damit eine der vielen Facetten des Themas, die die styriarte in einer phantastischen nächtlichen Reise vom Mittelalter bis in die Gegenwart aufgreift.

Barocke Schlösser, Kirchen, Kalvarienberge – sie prägen das Bild der Stadt Graz und ihrer Umgebungen, und sie erhalten ihr musikalisches Gesicht in den Konzerten der styriarte '93.

„Raum und Klang“ ist das scheinbar abstrakte Programm des Festivals. Doch das Thema wird schnell konkret, wenn es nicht erfüllt wird, wenn Stücke nicht zum Raum passen, wie es heute allerorts täglich geschieht. Die styriarte '93 sucht deshalb für Musik von Monteverdi bis Schumann die richtigen Räume, und sie hat es leicht im unerschöpflichen Ambiente von Graz.

So umfangen den Hörer barocke Raum-Klang-Erlebnisse rund um den Jahresregenten Claudio Monteverdi (Venezianische Vesper im Dom, Madrigali unter den Arkaden des Landhaushofs), ebenso wie Trauer- und Festmusiken der Habsburger Kaiser (Lamento im Mausoleum, Fux in Mariatrost), oder Freiluft-Divertiment für Bläser (Schloss Eggenberg) und Streicher-Concerti in Klausur (Minoritensaal).

So holen Klassik und Romantik fremde Lebensräume und ihren Klang in die Steiermark: In Schumanns "Rheinischer" wird ihn Nikolaus Harnoncourt auf seine kompromisslose Weise entdecken. Er, aber auch das Domus-Quartett aus London führen Mozart auf die Reise nach Prag. Souvenirs aus Italien sendet das Chamber Orchestra of Europe – kurzum: Bei der styriarte '93 reichen einander Raum und Klang die Hand. Und Höfe, Kuppeln und Gewölbe werfen dem Hörer das vielstimmige Echo dieses Handschlags zurück.

Dem Musikhörer unserer Tage geht es gut: Er kann aus einem unbeschränkt breiten Angebot an Musikstilen auswählen, und selbst wenn er sich nur der abendländischen Kunstmusik verschreibt, ist ihm die Vielfalt beinahe unüberblickbar. Geht es dem Musikhörer unserer Tage wirklich gut? Bietet ihm das breite Angebot eine Heimat, deren musikalische Sprache er versteht, in der er sich sicher fühlt, die er verteidigen würde?

Zu verteidigen war die musikalische Sprache immer dann, wenn bahnbrechende Komponisten alte Ordnungen in Frage stellten, schlimmer: wenn die Wortführer von derlei Revolutionen ein neues Zeitalter der Kunst für angebrochen erklärten – ein "ars nova" im 14. Jahrhundert, die "nuove musiche" um 1600, den "neuen melodischen Stil" um 1730, wieder eine "Neue Musik" in unserem Jahrhundert.

Die styriarte '94 verteidigt nichts. Sie stellt die Vielfalt musikalischer Sprachen zur Diskussion, indem sie deren Bruchlinien präsentiert: Brüche, die unsere Vorfahren aufzuregen vermochten, die Auseinandersetzungen provoziert und quasi Schlagzeilen gemacht haben. Die styriarte '94 geht noch einen Schritt weiter: Sie sucht in ihren Programmfolgen nach Brücken, die sich weit über die Grenzen stilistischer Revolutionen spannen. Und sie findet: Die Brüche von gestern haben die Brücken von vorgestern bereits enthalten.

Our epoch, the technical age, has gotten a bad name. We have begun to recognize our own limits. Once again, we stand in awe of creation and of things outside the realm of out understanding. And this awe has brought back the myth, the saga, which captures the inexplainable in words and pictures.

Music has always been a medium for the mythical. It was viewed as the language of the gods, the music of the spheres, a model of the cosmos.

In the Baroque era, this context is still intact. Singing, Orpheus invents the opera, and Apollo, his father, lends the rulers both his symbol, the sun, and his music, the concert of the muses. The composer himself becomes Orpheus or Apollo.
With the Industrial Revolution, the power of the saga disappears, and musicians begin to invoke it: in nature, in Christian mythology, in the exotic world of the Near East.

In the present, there is "total information". Apparently, it doesn't always bring happiness, for the myth has re-awakened, to be used and misused as a refuge in a rationalized world.

The styriarte 1995 sets out to search for these traces of the mythical. Three major collections of myths, the antique "Metamorphoses", the Christain epic "Paradise Lost", and the oriental "Stories from 1001 Nights" serve as a starting point for a musical voyage of discovery to the archetypes of out culture.

In the Babel of the modern media world, the terms classical, classical music and the classics are constantly bandied about. The listener is facetiously warned "Attention: Classics": We make use of the label „classical“, and the word always seems to denote something special, something unusual.

It is a term that inexplicably seems to demand respect, that acts as a convenient pigeonhole for the entire output of European musical art created between 996 and 1996. styriarte '96 has decided to examine this label and study its aura. At the same time, it poses a quite provocative question: Is some music inherently classical, or can just any piece of music become classical? And further: Once classical, always classical?

styriarte '96 takes a look at some classical works that are forgotten today, such as Haydn's oratorio Il Ritorno di Tobia, and some works that were never admitted to the Pantheon of classical highlights, such as Robert Schumann's opera Genoveva. Performances of both works will be conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

Works by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven – the masters of Viennese classical music – are the centre of attention at the Styrian festival. These works are synonymous with the classical qualities of harmony, beauty and clarity, but, at the time of their creation, they were examples of new music. Who would claim that Hadyn's string quartets were considered classical from the beginning? Friedrich Nietzsche even went so far as to ask: Did our music not develop in contrast to classical tastes, so that, by definition, it renounces any claim to classicism?

With this in mind, styriarte '96 examines the claim to classicism of some monuments of European music: Josquin and Monteverdi, Lully and Corelli, Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. What, in effect, is „simply classical“ about them and what has been later stylised to become classical?

Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms spanned the 19th century with their livetimes, and yet they are not limited to it. Their music made promises for the future which were not fulfilled until the 20th century. Schubert and Brahms as individuals, and the fragmentary and the monumental as ideas; these concepts outline the territory into which the 1997 Styriarte Festival will expand.

The fragmentary in the work of Franz Schubert is exposed even in Franz Grillparzer's eulogy for the Viennese composer: "Here, the Art of Music buried a treasured Possession, and even better Hopes". Thinking of the genres of opera and symphony, which Schubert had left "unfinished", Grillparzer could not realize the revolutionary nature of Schubert's chamber music and sonatas. It took the artistic revolutibns of the 20th century to fulfill the Better Hopes which had still been a shock for the late romantics.

Johannes Brahms was a monument in his own time, and he still is one today. He consciously strove for completion of his life's work, and succeeded. This perfection is clearly recognizable in the four symphonies, which Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe will present for the first time as a cycle at the '97 Styriarte Festival, continuing their great Schubert-Beethoven cycles under the auspices of the Styriarte. Today Brahms' work is seen mainly from the standpoint of the classicist monumental. However, in the 20th century, Arnold Schoenberg formulated a different view of Brahms as a forerunner of expressionism and modernism. This is one of the goals of the '97 Styriarte Festival: to free Brahms from the golden cage of perfection, and to discover in his work the Better Hopes of the modern and experimental, those "new paths" which, according to Robert Schumann, were opened by Brahms' music.

The story of the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden is an ancient fable of mankind, the dream of returning there a primeval motif of European art. Rediscovering the Garden of Eden, regaining our lost innocence through art - this dream has in many cases become reality in this past millennium, and styriarte '98 will be dreaming it, too.

Robert Schumann's oratorio "Paradise and the Peri" takes us back to the original site of the fable, the oriental Garden of Eden, in which a fallen angel, the peri, wanders the Orient seeking the key to the lost paradise. Nikolaus Harnoneourt's interpretation of Schumann's tale of redemption will be one of the key events of the festival. Organ pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, music of Saint Hildegard of Bingen and two of the most significant masses in music history will represent the Christian idea of salvation. Joseph Haydn's "Harmoniemesse" is the next work in Nikolaus Harnoncourt's series of Haydn performances in Stainz. The acclaimed Tallis Scholars will be back to styriarte with Palestrina's "Missa Papae Marcelli".

The conflict between the Orient and the Occident will surface on several occasions in the programmes of the styriarte festival. Joseph Haydn's Christian knight Rinaldo gets entangled in the paradise of the oriental sorceress Armida which he finally destroys, then setting out to liberate Jerusalem. Nikolaus Harnoncourt will conduct Haydn's most important opera seria "Armida" starring Cecilia Bartoi. In Monteverdi's "Combattimertto", Rinaldo's comrade-in-arms Tancredi shows the heathen Clorinda the path to the Christian paradise though baptism and the sword. And it is with the sword that the Catholic kings destroyed the paradise of the lberian-Moslem and American Indian kingdoms – a subject focused on by Jordi Savall and his Hesperion XX ensemble.

In the 19th century, too, the dream of the Garden of Eden came true in foreign lands. Franz Liszt dreamt this dream in the luscious gardens of the Villa d'Este near Rome. Czech emigrants found their paradise in the maize fields of lowa, as glorified by Antonin Dvorak in his American chamber music.

Paradises of the mind and projections back to the state of innocenee will go to round off the subject. The conception of the ancient pastoral land of Arcadia, the transfiguration of childhood, the "back to Nature" attitude of the Enlightenment. Music was always an integral part in the history of these intellectual phenomena. It is in music that the return to paradise has become material reality.

Tell me, Love! - With these words Ingeborg Bachmann addressed love itself in a poem in order to fathom its mystery. Please tell me Love what I am not able to explain. But love did not explain itself. It will remain a mystery to mankind, forever. But does it not reveal itself in the words of poets and in the notes of musicians?

Within the wide panorama of European cultural history styriarte '99 is looking for words and sounds of love – from the Middle Ages up to the present. Much of it can be understood immediately: When a poet like Ronsard describes the body of his loved-one in erotic metaphors and the composers of his time invented daring harmonic progressions to accompany it, this declaration of love today seems as relevant as it did 450 years ago. Again and again artists have drawn inspiration from their own experiences. The young Mozart courted his lover Aloysia Weber with arias which are nothing but declarations of love. Schumann, who was somewhat older portrayed the young Clara Wieck in piano pieces. The 73 year o1d Janacek openly dedicated his ecstatic second string quartet to his late Muse.

Works of art in which love's wretchedness is expressed, such as the Alto-Rhapsody and the Rinaldo cantata by Johannes Brahms, strike us as being even more modern. Nikolaus Harnoncourt dedicates one of his styriarte programmes with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe to these works.

Other declarations of love are tied to a cultural-historical context which is no longer familiar to us. Whether Monteverdi fervently celebrates the Virgin Mary or Bach sings the praises of the Unio mystica with Jesus with equally erotic metaphors, both convey a most baroque perception of love which we can hardly share anymore, but can still admire.

The heroines and heroes of opera don't seem to need any justification. Love has always been their profession. Orfeo's lament of love, Dido's death song, Don Giovanni's seductions and Isolde's death for love are icons of love in the world of theatre. And still one may be permitted to ask whether everything is realty as intact and natural as the century-long performance tradition suggests. styriarte '99 presents love on the stage questioning its truth – either by means of new interpretations, such as in Harnoncourt's Wagner debut, or the scenic produdion of Monteverdi's Orfeo, or by opposing to genres such as the Lied, or the Schlager.

Tell me, Love – we are confident that love will begin to speak in the programmes of styriarte 99.

The styriarte festival has long been a synonym for outstanding artistic events in magnificent historic surroundings. It's the festival where Nikolaus Harnoncourt feels at home, having spent his childhood and youth in Graz and returned here every summer since 1985.

The theme of styriarte 2000 focuses on an ancient, yet timeless story: the building of the Tower of Babel, the biblical story about the founding of the first town in human history. Babel, as the very first town, stands as a model for cultural organisation and, as the Babel of tongues, for cultural diversity.

Thus, the diversity of cultures is the central theme of our programme: Moorish Spain, Byzantium/Istanbul, Saxony in Bach's times, the empire of Charles V or the multiracial state of Austria-Hungary are the locations of the stories told at styriarte 2000.

The festival's second strand looks at other flourishing metropolises: a styriarte panorama stretching from ancient Rome to modern New York brings history to life through music.

In keeping with our theme, we have taken up residence in a Tower of Babel of the present: the Internet. Do come and visit us at www.babel.vg from time to time to experience Styrian festival culture!

"Freedom, Equality, Fraternity","Wahre Eintracht","Lux aeterna" - the concept of a better life in a more peaceful world is as old as society itself, and social orders are as different as their utopian doctrines. Thomas Morus and other classical philosophers of political utopia find their counterparts in art, and, especially, in music, since the latter has been able to defy censorship to a greater degree than literature or philosopy. The styriarte 2001 outlines the eternal dream of a better world in all its facets through the history of music, its bright as well as its dark sides.

In Occidental culture, the Christian doctrine of receiving compensation for the bitterness of life and eternal reward in the Kingdom of God has been propagated for centuries. In its most intimate form, in Bach's music, this vision still appeals to us today. Medieval concepts of a theocratic state, as reflected by the monks' hymns, date back to an archaic world. Olivier Messiaen revived this medieval dream in powerful melodies in the 20th century, whereas Verdi, the agnostic, dramatically confronted this Christian utopia with the fears of mankind in his Messa da Requiem. Nikolaus Harnoncourt will conduct Verdi's mass for the first time at the styriarte 2001.

In the Age of Enlightenment reason replaced faith as the general guideline for utopian hopes. The brief dream of an enlightened society, as conceived by King Frederick II of Prussia, the Elector Palatine Carl Theodor and Emperor Joseph II was shrouded by the sound of the gallant age. The Great Revolution, which indeed brought about a new society, swept away this Arcadia. Haydn and Beethoven each reacted in their very own way to this development: Nikolaus Harnoncourt will conduct the most dreamlike of the late Haydn masses, the "Theresienmesse", as well as Beethoven's funeral cantata for Joseph II, as well as attempting to capture the zeitgeist of the Revolution, together with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, in Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 2.

This wildly contested utopia was followed by the Restoration and brand-new Capitalism. Under the repressive Government of Metternich, Franz Schubert became the spokesman of a generation without any future, which tried to reach out for "better worlds" in the endless "Liebestraum" of his music. Only a few years later, Chopin's music was celebtarted by the "nouveau riches" in Paris salons.

The 20th century was marked by increasing tension, in politics and arts. Ideologies with utopian aims turned into cruel systems of repression, which provoked similarly fierce reactions in art. Shostakovich against Stalin, Viktor Ullmann's Theresienstadt opera "Der Kaiser von Atlantis" against the Hitler dictatorship, Israel and New York as safe havens for refugees - all over the world art set and has been setting up to now signals against murderous doctrines of salvation.

What will remain of all this in 2001? There is still more utopian spirit than the illusions created by Hollywood's dream factory might suggest. The belief in the silent power of art is still there, an it is kept alive by the styriarte Festival.

Faith, it can move mountains – even at the beginning of the 21st century. Our yearning for the Divine is urged by forces which no ideology may resist. Human beings have accomplished the greatest achievements in civilisation and the cruellest works of destruction with their eyes raised towards heaven. In the mirror of music they captured their sorrows and pleas and sent them upwards.

In a numerical order like our cosmos, abstract like the mysteries of Creation, and yet eloquent like a prayer, music is a child of heaven – a symbol of the Divine and at the same time a language in which we seem to be able to communicate with God. Human beings and musicians have therefore always trusted in the power of music if they wanted to move closer to the Divine.
The styriarte Festival 2002 sums up all the hymns of a millennium directed upwards to heaven. Pilgrimages and masses, litany and prayer, Te Deum and Ave Maria, choral hymns and the Song of Solomon, Jewish, Moslem and Christian chants fuse with each other. In the eternal cycle of invoking God, human beings and their plight are the focal point: In Haydn’s "Heiligmesse" Nikolaus Harnoncourt pleas again to God to bestow mercy upon earth in war-torn times, after having already conducted five masses by the late Haydn in previous years. Cecilia Bartoli lends him her celestial soprano. With a song of pilgrimage on their lips, farmers flee from the Turks, with the splendid hymns composed by Johann Joseph Fux the Viennese Court celebrates the victory over its enemies. In his funeral motets written for affluent citizens of Leipzig, the Thomas-cantor Bach also laments the death of his own offspring. Rejoicing and cheerful the bride adorns herself for God, both in Bach’s organ chorales and in the hymns on the Song of Solomon.

The great instrumental pieces of the 19th century praise God in a more mysterious manner. With Beethoven and Schubert the experience of transcendence was first explored in symphonies, sonatas and string quartets: as a "holy song of thanksgiving" in the case of Beethoven, full of shattered emotion, and yet filled with yearning in the case of the late Schubert. Brahms and Bruckner, Mendelssohn and Franck followed in their footsteps. Their "absolute music", apparently only "forms moved by sound", clearly speaks of the mystery of Divinity – up to the Revelations by Olivier Messiaen. Musicians like Markus Schirmer, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Eszter Haffner and the Quatuor Mosaïques cross the borders to the "realms of the completely different" in their concerts.

Dramas of faith are staged at the styriarte 2002 Festival: Handel in the Stefaniensaal torn between the cheeky Italian Lucifer of his early "Resurrezione" and the robust English hallelujahs of his "Messiah", "Cantigas de Santa Maria" from medieval Spain with Jordi Savall in the Romanesque Basilica of Seckau, Hasse's mythological drama of Pyramus and Thisbe in the styriarte Festspielhaus. And outdoors, high above the roofs of the Styrian capital, the drama of the chiming bells of Graz can be heard – right from top of the Schlossberg hill.
Drama, hymns and instrumental prayer are the three realms in which the styriarte Festival 2002 strives to explore the Divine.

For some it is the "language of emotion", for others simply "sophisticated entertainment", and yet others sense in it a "conversation among sensible people". As many and diverse the attempts to define music are, so are its effects. And still its power over the hearts of people will always remain a mystery, its magic always inexplicable.

The styriarte Festival 2003 starts searching for the roots of this mysterious power. It is searching for it in moments of human life, which would be incomplete without music: dance and festival, private happiness and public transports of delight, praise to God and mourning.

Festivals provide the styriarte 2003 with a new face: a fest for Orpheus, a fest for Hugo Wolf, Don Giovanni's festive banquet and "Tanz.fest" for dance festivals. Music is put right into the middle of life; at the table, onto the parquet floor and into the wide space of interpersonal relations. The new "festival theatre" of the styriarte and Schloss Eggenberg provide all of the evening performances with the appropriate settings.

The festival already owes its motto to a fest: "Alexander's Feast" seen from the Baroque viewpoints of Dryden and Handel. Thanks to Nikolaus Harnoncourt's thrilling interpretation, this magnificent ode on "the power of music" becomes the metaphor for the festival: people gather at a special place to let themselves be lifted up by music. This can happen through sheer virtuosity like in a piano concert with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, through Baroque sensuality like in the Cecilian odes of Handel and Purcell, or through the unity of word and tone in the Goethe settings by Beethoven, Mendelssohn or Schubert. In these manifestations of grandeur, Nikolaus Harnoncourt is the director of emotions at the styriarte 2003.

And in Jacques Offenbach’s operetta "La Grand-Duchesse de Gérolstein" Harnoncourt takes the "real step from grandeur to the ridiculous" as Karl Kraus would have put it. The "Grande-Duchesse" in its original French version, with the magnificent Marie-Ange Todorovitch in the title-role and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, is the musical theatre production of the styriarte 2003 – a première both for the new Helmut-List-Halle as the styriarte opera stage as well as for Jürgen Flimm in his role as styriarte director.

Around the great Offenbach event revolve smaller ones: Offenbach as cellist, Offenbach seen through the "lenses" of Karl Kraus, and a tribute to the first Viennese "Grand Duchess" Marie Geistinger.

The power of singing is not only a theme of Offenbach and Handel. A whole series of concerts dedicates itself to singing and its myths. The "classical" singer Orpheus precedes his modern successors: the "Troubadour" René Zosso, the masters of the lied Wolfgang Holzmair and Florian Boesch, and the singers of Jordi Savall’s Capella Reial. Instrumental timbres – Renaissance lute and Baroque oboe, Markus Schirmer's Fazioli and the gut strings of the Quatuor Mosaïques – complete the styriarte kaleidoscope of sounds. In what the power of music lies will remain a secret. And yet styriarte 2003 invites you to experience it.

"Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding" ("Time is a strange thing")… "It is around us and in us. It is trickling down our faces, trickling down the mirror, it flows in my temples. And between you and me, there it flows again, silently, like an hourglass…" The philosophical musings of Hofmannsthal's Marschallin on the inexorable passage of time could serve as the motto of the styriarte 2004. The Styrian festivals travel "from Time to Time": from earthly time to God’s heavenly time, from man's transience to God’s eternity, between the different times of the day and seasons of the year, and the various rates of speed of music, called "tempi".

However, at the styriarte, time does not pass "silently, like an hour-glass", but powerfully – in the rhythms of that form of art which, like no other, is able to make time perceptible. History and the passing of time are transformed into sensuous emotions. Music structures time, makes the passage of time audible and brings time to a standstill. The famous "Verweile doch, du bist so schön" ("But stay, you are so beautiful!") is transformed by music into an instant of complete fulfilment, into an illusion of infinity. Thanks to this illusion, composers were able to evoke the eternal peace of death in finite sounds. Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Stefan Vladar conduct two monumental, yet rarely heard, versions of requiems at this year's styriarte. These two requiems were written by two composers whose deaths will be commemorated by the music world in 2004: Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, who died in 1704, and Antonin Dvorák, who died in 1904.

Man has always tried to explore what lies beyond life, where "time without time" begins. Telemann tried to find an answer to this question in his oratorio "The Day of Judgement" with the optimism of an Enlightenment philosopher, and Franz Schubert with the shuddering of a musician of the Age of Romanticism in his song "Group from Tartarus". Both pieces of music are part of Nikolaus Harnoncourt's comprehensive programme for the styriarte 2004. He will again be joined by Pierre-Laurent Aimard on the piano and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Concentus Musicus Wien, the Arnold Schoenberg Choir, and international vocal and string soloists to present classical music pieces by Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann in new interpretations.

Telemann and Dvorák will also be present in other music events of the Festival which focus on the passage of time in everyday life, the strictly regulated flux of time and the tides of nature. Telemann's "Hamburg Ebb and Flow" as well as Haydn's "The Times of Day" and Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" have to be part of this programme.

God's heavenly time is present in the styriarte programme with old music before 1700. The course of an ecclesiastical year is illustrated in Gregorian chants and the biblical Book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) of the Old Testament is portrayed in early Baroque music. Jordi Savall presents a monumental oratorio on life and the flux of time, dating back to the year 1600, and Cavalieri's "Rappresentatione di anima e di corpo", relating the life story of an outstanding woman, Mary, the Mother of God, in the form of music.

A separate chapter of the styriarte is dedicated to the various rates of speed in music, the tempi. Adagio, largo, presto and the sophisticated tempi of the late Schubert are on the Festival's "timetable". And finally, like in 2003, several fests will be part of the styriarte programme: an Organ Fest, a Fest of Transience, and a Midsummer Fest as the opening event of the festival. Time will be omnipresent in the styriarte 2004 – in our faces, our temples, "around us" and "in us", like Hofmannsthal would have put it.

Every human being has five senses. They are an important gate to reality. We can only perceive the world around us by seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting: the styriarte 2005 will focus on the sensuality of human beings.

The festival will start with the epitome of female sensuality: Carmen, the gypsy, clothed in George Bizet's seductive music. Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his Carmen, Nora Gubisch, cast out their nets of Mediterranean sensuality to capture the styriarte audience.

The second opera hero of this year's festival also lives in the Mediterranean: Orlando, the furious knight Roland, is madly in love and out of his senses. Based on Ariost's "Orlando furioso", Joseph Haydn composed the tragicomic opera "Orlando paladino" which will be presented by Nikolaus Harnoncourt in concerto form.

Mediterranean panoramas will unfold around these two heroes of the opera. The 2005 festival will adopt Nietzsche's motto of "il faut méditerraniser la musique", which sprang from his worship of "Carmen" – from the "Folies d'espagne" to Ravel's "Bolero".

We can fully trust our senses at the small and large musical festivals of the styriarte, too: culinary and audible delights will enter a magical, yet worldly union.

Our last sojourn into the festival's swirl of the senses takes us up to higher spheres: from the dances of Oriental dervishes to the dancing rhythms in Bach's Mass in b minor, we will catch glimpses of the belief that we can only see God by way of our senses.

(styriarte sujet 2005: retina of a drosophila at the stage of an embryo, Claude Desplan, New York University, Department of Biology.)

"Everyone wants to be happy." Aristotle hits the nail on the head as usual. Yet to what trouble they go to find happiness! We chase happiness or try to force, outwit or capture it – and some even seem to fail to notice it. So it is high time that the styriarte focuses on that fleeting good and resolves to be Finally Happy in 2006.

Goethe's Faust almost literally shows which dangers we have to face on our quest for happiness. Robert Schumann, the composer, recognised himself in Faust, the restlessly searching scholar. His overwhelming Faust scenes were to be his lifework. For Nikolaus Harnoncourt, in turn, this year's performance in Graz will be the culmination of his own quest for the soul of German Romanticism.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his Concentus Musicus will also show that we can respond to the world's horrors in a self-certain way if we firmly believe in a better life in the hereafter with the great cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach under the motto "Joyful Be, O Ransomed Throng".

But where could we find happiness on earth? Many composers sought happiness in places where they could be themselves. And so the styriarte 2006 will follow Handel to Rome, Haydn to London, Mozart to Prague, and Schubert to the wine region of western Styria. The festival will seek to unravel the happiness of childhood in Schumann's Scenes from Childhood, celebrate happiness – Mazel tow! – at a Jewish wedding in the Schtetl and – Tu felix Austria! – at a Habsburg wedding in Eggenberg Castle. The styriarte will venture to the 18th century gambling tables with Mozart, and the casinos of the 20th century with Cole Porter. And with Jordi Savall, the styriarte will find happiness in a nobleman, who is often derogatorily dubbed the "Knight of the Sad Countenance", but who is nevertheless happy: Don Quijote.

Finally Happy! For the styriarte, it is obvious that music – like hardly any other human pursuit – may help us find true happiness. In what follows, we will present fifty stages on our way to happiness. Please join us!

Europa, the Phoenician princess, was gathering flowers with her friends near the seashore, when suddenly a white bull sprung from the waves, so stunning and beautiful that Europa climbed onto his back and let him carry her from the slopes of Lebanon eastwards across the sea. The bull was Zeus, the father of the gods, disguised as a bull, who had fallen for Europa's beauty and to whom she now readily succumbed. In Crete, Zeus went to shore with his booty and fathered the future king Minos: the mythical hour of birth of our continent.

"Wanted: Europe" is the ambiguous motto under which the styriarte 2007 sets out on a search for the abducted princess of a mythical past, while at the same time strives to explore the continent of Europe and its changing identity. Time and again, it has been music as a universal lingua franca that has forged new ties to mend the torn fabric of Europe.

Ties across the rifts between faith and enlightenment, and ties between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Beethoven created an eternal monument to Napoleon, the revolutionary, as well as to the God of Christianity with his Mass in C major and the oratorio "Christ on the Mount of Olives", directed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. In their programmes, Jordi Savall and Vladimir Ivanoff try to mend the ties between the different Mediterranean cultures.

The change of seasons leaves its mark on people in Europe. Not only Vivaldi with his "Quattro Stagioni", but also Claude le Jeune, the French master of Renaissance music, with his "Quatre Saisons" and Joseph Haydn with his "The Four Seasons" oratorio bear witness to this. Nikolaus Harnoncourt directs this song of praise to diligence and luxuriantly blossoming fields with a select cast of musicians.

To talk about Europe also means to talk about nations. Travelling musicians like the Mozarts distinctly felt and portrayed national characteristics. And national styles often set the tone in music itself. After some time, however, the tables turned again: the madrigal and string quartet were not confined to national borders, and Renaissance and classical music turned out to be supranational styles. And in Baroque music, Bach also knew no bounds and preferred his "mixed taste".

When in the political struggle for national identity differentiation was the order of the day, music has more than once undermined politics. And even today, music still helps to open up new horizons, question old prejudices and serves to prove that Europe has not become a petrified and static construct, but that it is able to re-invent iself again and again – as a vision, potential, and hope.

"Fuor del mar, ho un mar in seno": Having been saved from the turmoil of the sea, Idomeneus, King of Crete, can find no peace – the storm wrestles on within his soul. The drama of man, who is completely at the mercy of fickle fate, has often been depicted in the metaphor of the stormy sea and nobody has better expressed this metaphor musically than Mozart in his great opera "Idomeneo".

This marvellous piece, written by the 24-year-old Mozart, directed and staged by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, stands at the centre of the styriarte 2008. The Graz maestro reverts back to the original Munich version of the piece and deploys a sensational young line-up of singers with Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu in the title role. The immense power of the Arnold Schoenberg Choir braves Neptune's storms while the original sound of Concentus Musicus Vienna will be pushed to its limits with Mozart's most revolutionary score.

But it's not only around Crete, the island punished by Neptune, that the sea rages. In Hamburg Harbour also, ancient deities rampage in the ebb and flow of the tide. We see the canal city of Venice storm-lashed. Handel's opera heroes are pursued by mountainous waves – like Commissario Brunetti in Donna Leon's novels. The styriarte 2008 leafs through the musical "seascapes" of the baroque era and paints a fresco of an unleashed elemental force.

The Roman "Mare Nostrum", the sea in which Crete lies, brings a third narrative chord to the festival. Jordi Savall relates the story of the Sephardic Jews who were driven apart and spread to every coast of the Mediterranean, in the same way that the Greeks, making their way home from Troy, were scattered to the four winds by the wrath of the gods. In a second programme he follows the path of the Spanish Armada up to England’s coast. We hear of the victory of an English naval hero in Egypt and of the myth of the fountain of youth in the Mediterranean world.

In this country, where rivers and lakes, fountains and springs are merely a source of drinking water, things are somewhat less mythological. But these sources of water have beneficial effects on the body and the soul, as composers have often experienced: Bach in Karlovy Vary, Brahms at Lake Thun and Schubert in Bad Gastein. For the romanticists, in particular, streams and lakes were symbols of good fortune in life and the destiny of man. For Franz Schubert, everything flows: the whims of the trout in "Die Forelle" and the fair maid of the mill in "Die Schöne Müllerin", the most "heavenly lengths" of his later chamber music.

"Not Bach (stream), but Sea should be his name". Several chapters in the styriarte programme have been dedicated to the great composer whose name brings water to mind. There are also several performances in the programme which pursue the myths of the sea in cinema. For the closing week of the styriarte, the interior of the Helmut-List-Halle is transformed into a ship – the S.M.S. styriarte.

"Everything flows" – in our lives as in the styriarte 2008.

Friedrich Schiller liked to reach for the stars. And he was never afraid to remind us of the great truths of life in a serene and composed way. He demanded much of his contemporaries, like many idealists do. And when he pondered over the responsibilities of artists, he at once made them responsible for upholding the dignity of all mankind. Was that too idealistic? Yet if you see the world with open eyes, no other issue appears to be more pressing than the question of what has become of the dignity of mankind and who indeed stands up for it.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt has never been one to be content with singular solutions: in his music, he has always striven to grasp the entire picture. And now, in the year of his 80th birthday, he allows one of his lifelong dreams to come true, both to himself and the styriarte audience. What could be a more fitting theme than the exploration of human dignity, not only based on Schiller but from a more essential viewpoint. Nikolaus Harnoncourt presents a piece of music which, like almost no other, is apt to honour those who are looked down upon with contempt, through artistic means: George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess". In 1935, it was unthinkable and a musical milestone at the same time to make a physically handicapped Afro-American, who was as poor as a beggar, the hero of an opera. This also proves how powerful music can be: even to date, hits from "Porgy and Bess" like "Summertime" are still unforgettable, and the opera itself may be viewed as the victory of emancipation.

People should be honoured for their worth – and it is music, which can live up to that challenge. This does not necessarily mean that all music needs to be serious, on the contrary. One of the roots of musical in particular, popular music, sends out pure cheerfulness. Spiritual music, at the other end, is full of holiness; in her "Ordo virtutum" Hildegard of Bingen lets entire hosts of angel-like virtues praise the uniqueness of the human soul.

The greatest composers often created their most beautiful pieces when they sought to better the world or help their fellow man. Georg Friedrich Handel, for instance, collected money for an orphanage with his oratorios. He is one of the four masters who will be in the centre of the 2009 styriarte festival. All four of them were, in one way or the other, concerned with the dignity of mankind. Henry Purcell composed a musical piece against war in times of epidemics and religious dispute: in the centre of this work was the mythical King Arthur whose cheerfulness never fails to amaze listeners even today. Georg Friedrich Handel placed the personal responsibility of every human being in the centre of his musical work and celebrated the amazing beauty of life. Joseph Haydn found wit and irony in the most ordinary, simple aspects of life. And the oeuvre of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, one of the greatest geniuses of music, was prohibited and reviled for racist motives. All of these works may serve as examples for how human dignity and music have always been interwoven.

The 2009 styriarte festival wanders the tracks of these masters. It brings together resounding messengers of humanity. It shows how over the centuries artists have always tried to stop aberrations of man or lead them towards new avenues – new avenues into a better world. This may sound idealistic, but who, if not artists, are able to live up to the challenge which Schiller imposes on them in his poem "The Artists"?

“That which is easy is difficult,” wrote court Kapellmeister Johann Joseph Fux almost 300 years ago, “but it is in this difficult lightness that the exquisiteness of good taste and its zest lie.” Thus, music which is so entertaining, so popular that it seems weightless is by no means easy to create. The more natural music seems, the greater the skill behind its creation. Finding the right balance between the creator’s own standards and the audience’s preference was the continual challenge.

styriarte 2011 tells a story of this challenging “light entertainment”. The story begins in France, in the châteaux of the Loire Valley, where composers employed all the art of the Renaissance to express thrilling eroticism in musical tones, nothing more and nothing less. “A happy medium between too heavy and too light” is what Mozart wanted to achieve for his piano concertos, yet even he overdid it sometimes. As he was composing Idomeneo, Mozart's father warned him, “Do not forget that which is popular, which tickles long ears.” Mozart answered him, “Do not trouble yourself over what is popular; my opera shall have music which appeals to all kinds of people, except to those with long ears.”

Bedřich Smetana also succeeded in achieving this balance which obviously came so easily to Mozart. Smetana’s melody-rich opera The Bartered Bride has enjoyed worldwide success up till the present day. Kurt Hornolka says of the opera: “Everyone can understand it and, at the same time, it satisfies even the most musically demanding listener – a truly Mozartian Smetana effect. The difficult art of creating complete perfection in the seemingly simple comes together in this score.” Smetana’s Bride finds herself reposing on Nikolas Harnoncourt’s music stand for the first time ever, where he will present her in a semi-staged production and, naturally, in a very special setting. It will be a festival of voices wading in the light rhythms of Bohemia, or is there more to it than that? Does the lightness of this pastoral comedy in fact comprise ambiguity, gravity? As Eduard Hanslick sums it up, “Smetana does not let anything raw or trivial slip into his music. It is always natural, popular and melodious, never vulgar, which is a highly seldom occurrence in this genre and one of Smetana’s greatest merits.”

Nikolaus Harnoncourt has proven in Graz time and again that Joseph Haydn was much more than a master of cheerful banter. In this same spirit, Harnoncourt will take on the elder Haydn’s most frequent gimmick, the kettledrum stroke, in the Surprise Symphony for styriarte 2011. He will also direct listeners’ attention to works Haydn composed as a younger man. Though the thirty-year-old court conductor (Kapellmeister) found composing his Le matin symphonies in Eisenstadt easy, he struggled while composing his Cecilian Mass.

Bach, too, completed his Mass in B Minor little by little and for Jordi Savall, it will prove a touchstone for the “easy difficult”. Savall turns this motto around as he transforms Bach’s complicated fugues into light-footed Baroque dances. In his other styriarte 2011 performances, the Barcelona maestro concentrates on the lightness of being, which he invokes in English viola da gamba music as well as in Creole music of Latin America.

Is then “that which is popular” first and foremost a question of dance rhythms and folk melodies, music that is first felt in the legs before it reaches the ear? The answer is surely not that simple. Vivaldi’s undying Four Seasons, Bach’s Air and Schubert’s string quartet Death and the Maiden were anything but common street songs. What is it then about them that is so fascinating? Why did these particular pieces become so popular? And what happens to Schoenberg and Stravinksy when they indulge the light entertainment? What happens when Beethoven creates a variation of a well-known popular melody? Of course Johann Joseph Fux, who was so skilled in creating popular music, must also be present at this year’s event. The well of “difficult easy” seems inexhaustible as all this and more await audiences at the 2011 styriarte festival.

You cannot choose your family – after all, you are born into it. What counts – and not only since patchwork families have come to exist – is how we relate to our family. Some prefer living their own lives, others only feel comfortable if they can be with their next of kin, whether related or chosen. The styriarte Festival dedicates its newest programme to these “family people”.

For many artists, family, too, is more than a mere social group one is born into. Without their families, many musical geniuses would not have become what they are to us today, and often they cannot be comprehended without taking into consideration their family background. This is true, for instance, for Johann Sebastian Bach, who stemmed from an old dynasty of musicians, and whose children had occasionally been more famous than he was; none of this success, however, ever endangered peace within his family. When it comes to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his father Leopold sought to plan his son’s musical career almost with military precision and did not take well to his son’s attempts to wean himself from his family. In the case of Johann Strauss, his family life was not dominated by harmony, but by fierce, almost deadly competition. This year’s styriarte Festival presents all of these family people and many others. The programme lets us see behind the curtains and take a look at the homes of many great composers to illustrate how the most private aspects of life can turn into art.

For family people it is a sheer delight when their ties to others turn out to be inseparable and they can unwaveringly trust in finding a safe harbour from the storms of life in their families – storms which, in the world of art, are often especially fierce. On the other hand, such people are faced with an especially bitter fate if their families fall apart or if what once was their most valued haven of support and confidence gradually turns into a prison. Composers not only experience all of these feelings, they also write about them and set them to music, they tell stories about love and misery within families.

And it turns out that even the Holy Family has its own very private side. In the Catholic tradition, Mary, Mother of God, suffers her own private tragedy when faced with her son’s death. And while Jesus, even in his mortality, will always remain the Saviour of the World and Christ, Mary will always only be a mother, deeply bound in family. This is why we can feel with her and understand her suffering as much as humanly possible when faced with the Passion of Jesus Christ. Antonín Dvořák was familiar with these emotions when he composed his great “Stabat mater” in 1877 after his three children had died. Nikolaus Harnoncourt puts this masterpiece at the centre of his work for styriarte 2012. A story about family ties which not only shows empathy to human mourning, but, above all, also provides solace and hope for anyone willing to listen.

Please contact us for a copy of our programme.

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