Festival 20·21

The idea that music is supposed to tell us something about the spirit of the age in which it was written is of course a cliché. After all, music is universal, meant to endure for eternity, isn’t it? Although there’s something to be said about that last bit, even ‘immortal’ music (Bach, say?) is inextricably bound to its time and place, not just in terms of style and technique but also the worldview that emanates from it. It’s intriguing to think about how we might look back in a few decades (or centuries?) at the perspective of 2026 as shown in the Transit programming.

Europe today is caught between two fires. To the east, the war in Ukraine is making it clear that not everyone automatically appreciates the birth of new democracies. To the west, the developments in the US are revealing to a staggering degree how much the survival of even centuries-old democracies cannot be taken for granted. While the horror in Ukraine has by now peaked, the events in America are primarily waking us up to the fragility of an apparently established peace. Every day, we observe how minor violations of law and of common decency undermine a community’s stability.