This years festival theme: Origins

An origin is like a seed: a shoot that springs from something and develops into more than it originally was.

When we speak of origins in music, we often think of “the first”: the first symphony, the first opera, the first concert. These are important moments in music history, but what makes a moment an origin is what grows out of it. An origin is not important because it came first, but because it changed everything that came after.

This year’s festival is about these moments. Not as isolated events, but as seeds that sprouted, and that continue to sprout in the music we hear today.

No origin is born without a seed.

In a remote palace in Hungary, Haydn experimented with four string players. He did not know that he was planting a seed that would change all the music that came after. Today, classical music is unthinkable without the string quartet.

Mozart heard what Haydn was doing. He took the seed and let it grow in new directions. When he dedicated six string quartets to Haydn, he called them “the fruits of long and laborious work.”

Beethoven came to Vienna to receive “Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.” He took the quartet’s intimacy and transferred it to song and piano. With An die ferne Geliebte — six songs bound together as a single narrative — the song cycle was born.

Everything is connected. Nothing arises or lives in a vacuum. Their origin as composers took place in their own time. Their origin as recognized artists happened in ours. Some seeds need centuries to sprout.

Being original is difficult. Haydn knew this. Isolated at Eszterháza, far from everything and everyone, he was “forced to become original.”

But originality is often not about inventing something entirely new. Rather, it is often about seeing the familiar with fresh eyes: taking the established and twisting it, challenging it, allowing it to grow in unexpected directions.

When an artistic director such as Tine Thing Helseth puts together a festival programme, she faces the same question: How can we be original within a tradition that is 300 years old?

By returning to the origins, we find an infinite canvas. We see that what now seems fixed was once fluid. That what now seems self-evident was once daring. And that is something we can use.

When you hear a string quartet in Risør Church, you are not hearing just four musicians. You are hearing a 250-year-old conversation: Haydn finding his voice in isolation. Beethoven tearing down walls.

Origins are not closed chapters. They are invitations to continue the conversation.

Welcome to this year’s festival!