Ideals, Dogmas, Passions

Nikolaus Harnoncourt in Budapest

 

On March 25th 2002, the Concentus musicus and the Arnold Schönberg Choir of Vienna performed Mozart's Litanić Laure-tanć, K.195, Regina C¶li, K.127 and Haydn's "Heiligmesse" under Nicolaus Harnoncourt at the Budapest Congress Hall, as part of the Budapest Spring Festival. The following day, on his first visit to Hungary, sponsored by Warner Music Hungary, Harnoncourt was interviewed at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences before a packed auditorium.

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András Batta: I know two types of Austrians: those who like Hungarians and those who do not. I am told that your own family has some Hungarian roots, so would I be right in supposing that you are among the former?

Nikolaus Harnoncourt: My grandmother on my mother's side was Hungarian. As a child, my mother probably spoke better Hungarian than German. I myself, how-ever, rarely heard Hungarian spoken, really only when she took us children to Hungary in the mid-1930s. I remember her leaning out of the train window when we pulled into the station and calling out for a hordár, a porter. As for me, I could greet and count in Hungarian. And say the Lord's Prayer: Mindörökké Ámen-For ever and ever, Amen. My mother was 96 when she died, imagine that, and during the last twenty years of her life she would only speak Hungarian, not German. At the same time, I should mention that one of my grandfathers was Czech, so Czech is actually my father tongue. Most important of all, however, is the Central European lingua franca-that's my true mother tongue.

One comes across a number of minor Hungarian motifs in your biography. Your cello, for example, was made in Pest.

Yes, that's my prize cello. An 1848 instrument made by Johann Baptist Schweizer. Just magnificent!

Your wife, Alice Harnoncourt, was a pupil of the Hungarian violinist Tibor Varga.

Yes.

Your autobiography mentions the great impression the conductor Ferenc Fricsay made on you as an orchestral cellist.

The greatest experience I had with him was Bartók's Second Violin Concerto, with Ede Zathureczky as soloist. I was not involved in that performance, just one of the audience. I would never have thought that an old man could still play like that. He played so unbelievably beautifully that I have not dared to conduct the work since then, because there is no way I shall come across a violinist of his like.

I am told that for your seventieth birthday, you were given a facsimile of Bartók's manuscript score of the Second Violin Concerto by Professor László Somfai, the director of the Bartók Archive in Budapest. You didn't feel the urge to make it sound? After all, it would fit in with the series of Bartók's works that you have recently recorded (Divertimento, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta).

I shall conduct the work the moment that I find the right soloist. There are many good violinists but very few truly have the right approach to this masterpiece.

To stay with what you have already recorded, like the Music for Strings in the first movement of which every detail, not just of the fugal theme but the whole musical fabric, is so subtly audible. Is this historical music for you, just as works by Bach and Mozart?

Absolutely. The placement of the instruments on the concert platform, for instance, is precisely what Bartók prescribed. The recording was live, at a concert with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and it had been very thoroughly rehearsed.

Your own career appears to be a linear progression, at least judging from the Harnoncourt discography: Bach, then Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and so on. But we can see that early on you immersed yourself intensively in Bartók's music. You played the Divertimento for Strings as quite a young orchestral musician.

Well, yes. Chronologies of that sort really are just ostensible. For me, Schubert's works were always vital. There could be no day without Schubert, even if he was not the first composer whom we started to record. In any event, Bach was not among the very first recording projects but the Avignon School. We played the works of composers centuries before Bach, right up to the end of the Sixties. Since then we play no works earlier than Gabrieli, but then with Concentus musicus we don't go much beyond Haydn either. Exceptionally we sometimes play one or another of Schubert's or Beethoven's rarely heard works. Quite apart from that, from the age of seventeen onwards I have loved all music, from Adam and Eve down to the present day. Any composition more than five years old is historical to me. Whether it's five or fifty or five hundred years-it's all the same.

Your original instrument was the cello. Why the cello?

I come from a large family. There were seven of us children, I was the third. My eldest sister played the piano-not too well. A younger brother played the violin quite well, and my father was a pianist and he also composed-very well too. He wanted me to learn to play the piano, but that didn't appeal to me because at that time (I was six) I didn't like the sound of the piano. I must have been eight when my father told me, "Learn to play the cello, because we want to play Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert trios, and we need a cellist."
I sensed right away that this was my instrument, my sound, my voice. At that time, though, I only made music for fun; I had no wish to be a professional musician.

I understand that you didn't become a musician on account of the cello but on account of a radio broadcast: Furtwängler conducting Beethoven's Seventh.

I didn't know that it was Furtwängler.
I was seventeen years old and happened to be in bed at home. I listened to the music and sensed that I was a musician. At a stroke, everything else in my life became secondary.

Not many know that Herbert von Karajan also played a big part in your life.

For ten years he was the conductor in chief of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra; he engaged me as a cellist after a series of auditions in which forty of us took part.
I played the Dvorak Cello Concerto too, of course, though not the usual passage but the whole of the first movement. That just never happens at auditions. Karajan listened with great interest to the movement; my wife was accompanying me, since she is a good pianist as well as a good violinist. Karajan was a very interesting boss: you really did learn an incredible amount from him. My true training as a conductor took place in the orchestra. For seventeen years I played at the back desk, which was a very good place to be because it offered a direct view of the conductor. I played under all the great conductors of that generation. Bruno Walter too, all of them. The classic training, of course.

Intriguingly enough, you didn't try to make a big name for yourself as a cellist but kept your eye on a conducting career from the cello desk. And you started conducting quite late.

For a long time I conducted the ensemble from the cello, indeed I even conducted operas from an instrument, the viola. The viola, unlike the cello, has quite a few rests and does not tie one down the whole time. But then I had to discover for myself that if there is a choir as well, and the orchestra is large, I was able to beat time more nimbly and effectively as a traditional conductor. Of course, I still carried on conducting from the cello desk for a long time within the Concentus musicus. A moment came, though, when I said I would give it up because I wasn't able to practise regularly. So in 1986 I decided to put the cello away. Over. Not another note.

Your recording of the six Bach Cello Suites sticks in the memory.

That was actually an illicit recording.
I made it in my own home for an American book club. All of a sudden, amazingly, the recording started to appear in shops. I am no longer able to play the works, and even if I could, I would probably play them a little differently. But then what's done is done.

That interpretation, to my mind, is very typical of your performing personality. On the one hand, a historical approach, with Baroque dance characters, Baroque phrasing and ornamentation, and on the other, a spare but characteristic vibrato and a sort of romantic, "articulated" mode of expression. Are Romanticism and historical fidelity compatible?

Historical fidelity demands a romantic approach. Schumann once said that music itself is romantic. Nowadays we call everything sensual, Romantic. A sterile, vibratoless, ice-cold performance is not at all my idea of historical fidelity. Vibrato has existed since people first sang. The one thing that does not make sense is continuous and unremmitting vibrato. But someone playing without vibrato is like a child who has not yet quite mastered the violin. If we extract the sensual content from music, then what use do we have for it? In short, then, I don't feel there is any contradiction between Romanticism and historical fidelity. For me, historical fidelity means lively music-making.

You once said that authentic performance is no more than a living-through of the work. Does it follow then that period instruments and historical performance practice are not the prime guarantees of authenticity?

The living-through, the bringing to life, really is the essential thing, but one has to know an awful lot, starting with the right pitch. I have yet to meet a trainee instrumentalist, whatever musical academy he or she may be attending, who knew the basis for the pitch of his or her instrument. Often enough even members of professional orchestras are unaware of it, and yet it is of great importance. There should be a huge difference in the sound of an E major and an F major chord. One needs to know what makes a note, an interval, pure and what makes it impure. One can learn that. The characters of different dances can also be learned: what a polka, a waltz, a bourrée, a gavotte, is like. Those are not things that can be instinctively known. Once one has learned it, however, one ought not to give it any further thought, one should make music. Equally one cannot make music without some knowledge. It's like languages. One has to acquire a language, but whilst one is speaking one does not think about the language but about what one wants to say.

You mentioned pitch. Monika Mertl offers what strikes me as an interesting piece of information in her book about you and your wife, which has just appeared in Hungarian to coincide with your visit to Budapest.* She quotes you in saying that Concentus musicus adopts different pitches for different eras and composers. I made a note of them too: the 'A' tuned to 430 hertz for Mozart and Haydn, to 440 hertz for Italian Baroque music, and to 421 hertz for Handel and Bach. Among the things playing a part in the latter, I gather, are the Baroque flute and oboe that Concentus musicus has in its possession.

It is not due to the flute, of course, but on account of Bach that we tune that way. But it just so happened that the flute did help. The tuning forks that were used to pitch organs in Bach's time resonated at between 421 and 431 hertz. That corresponds to Handel's 423-hertz tuning fork, which is still extant and kept in London. The 'A' of the Leipzig and Dresden oboes that have come down from Bach's time and circle is also pitched at between 421 and 431 hertz. (One cannot determine that with absolute precision with an oboe because the bore plays a big part in it.)
The flute you mentioned, Frederick the Great's 1756 flute, which was presented to us as a gift, is supplied with seven alternative lengths for the upper portion. There is a whole tone's difference between the shortest and the longest of those lengths; in other words, that particular flute can be tuned within the interval of a whole tone. With the middle length of the set, the fourth, the pitch is at precisely 421 hertz. That is evidence, but it is not the sole basis of the tuning.

I presume you have an enormous collection of instruments. Do those instruments belong to Concentus musicus?

Why? Do you want to buy one? No, my own collection is not big at all. The only reason instruments interest me is that one can play them. I recorded the Bach Cello Suites, for example, on a Castanieri made in Paris. Before that I had a Viennese instrument dated 1720, but I made a straight swap for the Castanieri because the latter was better. We kept on exchanging instruments until, after a protracted search, we came across a really good Baroque oboe from Bach's time. So our instruments are not for display in museum cabinets. We put all of them to use. We decided at one point that the Concentus musicus sound would be set by the tuning of the string instruments of Jacobus Steiner, not of that other master instrument-maker, Stradivari. It is not good to mix the two. We therefore tried to track down and acquire the very best Steiner instruments. My wife plays on the world's finest Steiner violin. We tried to match the other instruments to that. Of course, if one of the Concentus musicians is greatly attached to a particular instrument, we will accept that too. I might add, the ideal instrumentation is different when we play the Viennese classics and when we play Early Italian Baroque and German or Austrian Baroque.

It may also be of no small importance that the Concentus musicus holds violins in a different way from that in, for instance, Dutch or English early music ensembles, under the chin and not pressed against the chest.

That's right. Well, you know, historical performance practice is based on sources, and as everybody is aware-and I gather there are a few musicologists here in the hall today-what one reads in any given source is whatever one has already decided beforehand, whatever one wants to substantiate. It's just like with the Bible: that is cited by pacifists and warmongers alike. Now, there is documentation for holding the violin under the chin. There is a source from as early as 1640 which says that the reason why the violinist should tuck his instrument under his chin is so it should not "hang down" and so that the violinist may easily shift the fingering from a high to a low position. But then there are illustrations in which the violinist is not holding the violin with his chin. The clincher, though, is the old instrument itself. I came across many old violins that were shut away in cupboards under Emperor Joseph II during the 1780s, when the monastic orders were dissolved. In the mid-1960s those violins were in exactly the same condition as they had been in the eighteenth century and earlier. At the place where the violinist held the instrument with his chin, the lacquer is missing on both sides of the tailpiece-sucked up by sweat and rubbed away by constant use. That could only have occurred with a chin hold. In any case, I am not dogmatic, though I do have clear ideals. My dogma is the sound. If someone plays the violin well with another hold, we can accept that.

At yesterday's concert we again experienced that Concentus musicus Wien is in every respect a different ensemble from other orchestras. That is apparent even in such formalities as the way its members greet one another at the start of a concert and take their leave from one another at the end.

Yes, there is a harmony that prevails amongst us. We have been playing together since 1953. At the very start there were just five of us. A really major crisis has never blown up.

Younger members have also come forward.

Seventy-year-olds need the imagination of twenty-year-olds. If they are any good, the youngsters become our pupils, and their pupils our grand-pupils.

What sort of experiences have you had when working with other ensembles, great orchestras that have great traditions of their own? How are you able to harmonise those traditions with your own ideas?

As far as ensembles playing historical instruments go, I only conduct Concentus musicus. I don't conduct others because, as it were, that is my instrument, that is what I grew up with, that is where I work. Since the day is only twenty-four hours long and I have just this one single life, I work with very few orchestras. If I conduct the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra or the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, I encounter ensembles that have their own traditions and their own ideas about pitch. Naturally, I respect those. What that means is that when I pick up the baton to conduct the same work with the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras, it comes to life in a different manner. Maybe even the tempi will be slightly different, because the musicians have a different temperament. What is identical, though, is a great love of music and the enthusiasm they can give to rethinking something. Not one of us wishes to play in a routine manner; we try to make even the most popular, most frequently played piece sound as if it were completely new. There are times when I make requests, being a string player myself, as to the manner in which the strings are played; there are times when I may not be happy with the timbre of the xylophone or triangle, and then we seek a new one. The essence, however, is the concurrence of temperament and tradition on both sides. That is very interesting and enjoyable. All in all, I have two general wishes.
I would like to see the day when the double-bass players in all the world's great orchestras throw away the metal strings of their instruments and exchange them for gut. They have no idea, having been playing on metal strings for forty years, what gut sounds like. They are incapable of bowing the proper, rasping bass that was one of the distinctive features of their instrument for centuries on end. Something has been lost for a minuscule gain. They play a bit more lightly and only have to tune their instruments twice a year. That's all. A number of double-bass players are well aware of this. My other wish would be even more difficult to fulfil, and that would be for every orchestra and opera house in the world to abandon for good that crazily high concert pitch of over 440 hertz and go back to 433 or 435. It happens anyway every third or fourth generation, and the time has come now to do it again. It puts an extraordinary strain on singers: they live and sing ten years less just because of that high pitch. And why is the pitch so high? Because intonation is only ever corrected upwards. If something doesn't sound right, they always say "It's flat!" Everyone is scared stiff of singing flat, so of course they then sing sharp. Piano makers too are panic-stricken, because the tensioning of strings is now so horrendous that they fear some day a piano is going to burst apart. If all the musical institutions in the world would stick together and force down the normal concert pitch, that might do something to help the present desperate state of affairs.

But how can that be achieved? A new movement would have to get under way...

Look here, it has been achieved ten times already over the course of musical history, the last time in the early twentieth century. Why should it not be achievable now? It would mean huge business for wind instrument makers: every instrument would have to be made anew.

When you directed the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's concert on January 1st, 2000, we came away richer by more than one eye-opener. An orchestra that had Johann Strauss's music in its very blood...

... its mother's milk.

Its mother's milk. And then along comes Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and he makes them depart from tradition in playing the "Radetzky" March at the start of the concert, and, what is more, the original version, which no one was familiar with.

I was curious to know what it would actually sound like. I hadn't heard that version before, either. I wondered why we should play with the accustomed horn chords and other things that were not even composed by Johann Strauss the elder, and why not with the little ornamentations that are actually in the manuscript? I also checked up on the tempi, and very precisely at that, because quite precise data do exist. Back then Hungarian, Austrian and Bohemian army officers sat down together. One said, "My regiment marches at a metronome marking of 106," the other, "Mine at 108." That's a tiny difference. They also declared: "It's impossible to go into battle at that pace, it would mean certain defeat." In response, the bandmaster-in-chief of the Habsburg regiments settled on a uniform tempo. That happened at the very time the "Radetzky" March was written.
I told the orchestra, "Gentlemen, I have checked back on the tempi in the Museum of Military History and other sources too." Interestingly, one of the most important of those sources happened to be Hungarian. What can be learned from that, amongst other things, is that in the side drum solo at the start of the March they originally played triplets. That makes the side drum solo a good deal harder than we have become accustomed to hearing it-indeed, one of the percussionists complained on that account.

By way of contrast, I would like to bring another, completely different work into the conversation, a work that has had a huge significance in your own life and, it would be fair to say, has a tradition: J. S. Bach's St Matthew Passion, which you last conducted just a few days ago in Vienna.
I know of two Harnoncourt recordings of the St Matthew Passion, one dated 1971 and a recent one, which came out in 2001. At the time of the latter recording, you spoke evocatively about the passage where the representative of the faithful (the allegorical figure of the daughter of Zion) interprets the extended arms of the crucified Christ as being opened to embrace them (Sehet, Jesus hat die Hand / Uns zu fassen augespannt...-"Behold, Jesus has stretched out His hand to grasp us..."). That passage, like the work as a whole, with the elapse of thirty years now comes across in a fundamentally different interpretation. The older one is more lyrical, more contemplative; the newer one is more agitated, the dramatic features are bolder.

The old recording of the St Matthew Passion was the first performance that the work had been given with a historical apparatus. Up to then, no one had dared attempt it. It called for many woodwind instruments that had not previously been used in twentieth-century performance (oboa d'amore, oboa da caccia) and that we did not yet have any knowledge of in practice. The experiment was a huge adventure as far as we were concerned. Since we had already won plaudits somewhat before with the recording of the St John Passion, with the encouragement of Teldec we plunged in. We held the first rehearsals without the choir, and I remember we were so overcome with emotion as to be on the point of tears. Of course, I was well acquainted with the work, as I had played it as a member of the orchestra every year during Easter week, but the new sound setting in truth posed an entirely new task. The work done in rehearsals was like restoring a picture: suddenly details of the work that previously had been totally obscured in gloom were clarified. That clarification also applied to the dialogue principle which forms the underlying concept of the work itself. The St Matthew Passion is actually a dialogue between two orchestras (and choirs), a dialogue between the faithful and those unable to believe. This was a voyage of discovery, just like when Columbus discovered America. Since then, of course, we have accumulated a vast amount of experience. Over twenty years we played and recorded all of Bach's cantatas, got to know the character of all the instruments of Bach's age, and I, for my part, devoted a huge amount of time to the work's meaning. To go back to the example you brought up just now, in the St John Passion, after Jesus has been crucified, the text runs: Und neigte sein Haupt und verschied-"And He bowed his head, and gave up His ghost." The dead Jesus is unable to hold his head up any longer, and his head droops. With Bach, that nod signifies both a negation and an affirmation of life. The text of the ensuing bass aria refers to this: Du kannst vor Schmerzen zwar nichts sagen, doch neigest du das Haupt und sprichst stillschweigend: Ja!-"Thou canst for anguish now say nothing, yet Thou dost bow Thy head and say in silence: Yea!" To redemption, that is. There is a similar situation in the St Matthew Passion. Jesus is crucified, with arms outstretched. The text here says that Jesus wishes to embrace us. The posture in death is thus charged with life: Come to my arms so that I may embrace you. In the orchestra meanwhile the bassoon negotiates the entire compass of the instrument: the space cannot be stretched out more widely. A musical symbol of the extended arms. In fact it's a crazy stroke of genius, which Bach sets to be sung by a woman who had always loved Jesus, with the idea of imparting that example to others. One can almost feel that this woman is all but driven out of her wits under the impact of the terrible events. At the time of the first recording I had not yet understood that in its full significance. The biggest difference between the two recordings is that today I am able to elicit the work's emotional content much more effectively than I could earlier.

I would like at least to touch upon a new subject. There is one important area that we have not yet spoken about, and that is opera. I read in Monika Mertl's book that even as a child you were attracted to the stage, putting on puppet theatre performances. Another of your childhood memories is of imagining opera characters in one of Mozart's violin sonatas.

That is only possible with Mozart, of course.

I have the general impression that you are inclined to drama by temperament. That comes out even when you are conducting instrumental music.

I always knew that one day I would conduct operas. It is quite true that as a child, for fifteen years, I held marionette shows -puppets, scenery, scripts, the lot. I took it all so seriously that I would not admit anyone into the shows who was under 18 years. I was 15 myself at the time... I said that it wasn't theatre for children, it was for adults. I gave it up later on, but the theatre and musical theatre have continued to play a central role in my life. As a cellist, from 1948 onwards I would occasionally substitute for my teacher in the opera house orchestra. The first opera in which I had to play was Richard Strauss's Salome, under Karl Böhm. Since the Vienna Staatsoper had been bombed, the performances took place in the Theater an der Wien, with a greatly reduced orchestra as there was not enough room. My teacher, who knew Böhm well, reassured him that I was his best pupil and knew everything just fine. As far as that went, I sight-read, and not a single note was in the right place except one that my teacher had pointed out to me earlier. That was the one that was very exposed. Later on, I played in many operas, including modern works, like Alban Berg's Lulu. The first opera that I conducted, being fully in charge, was Monteverdi's late masterpiece, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, in 1970. Whatever else, I wanted to give that work a hearing as very few people were acquainted with it then. That too was at the Theater an der Wien. I was given the best singers and the musicians of Concentus musicus. I conducted from the cello. An interesting experience, that was. We put a lot of enthusiasm into the five or six performances we gave, the audiences were also enthusiastic, but the critics were of the opinion that I should not bother with opera as I had no feel for musical theatre.
I then received an invitation from La Scala, because word about the performances of Ulisse had reached them too. That was the first time in my life that I conducted an orchestra that was not playing historical instruments. It was so successful that they had to extend the run of performances. During that period I had very little free time, so suggested that maybe my assistant could conduct the performances, as he was a much better conductor than me. The Scala management responded that people don't make their debuts at La Scala. And yet it was me who was the absolute beginner, as after all I had never conducted any opera at all in the traditional sense, let alone at La Scala... Subsequently, of course, I did conduct operas a lot.

How did the Monteverdi cycle at Zurich come into being?

The Intendant of the Zurich Opera House, Dr Helmut Drese, went to a performance of Monteverdi's Orfeo that I conducted in Amsterdam. As it was, he was looking for someone to do that anyway. The next day he called me-I didn't know him personally, I just heard a very high-pitched man's voice on the telephone-and informed me that I was going to be the conductor for the Zurich Orfeo, with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle as director. But I don't even know Ponnelle, I told him, let me at least meet him before I accept the engagement. Dr Drese arranged a meeting. He was like a chemist: he mixed two substances, and either something would come out of that, or it would explode. In our case it was the former. I talked over everything with Ponnelle for two hours, and it turned out that we would be able to work with one another. Ponnelle was a true-born Mediterranean type, southern French, frightfully Catholic-as far as joie de vivre is concerned, I mean, not in the religious sense. Each of the works that we jointly interpreted was talked through note by note; I was present at every rehearsal on stage. In short, a perfect unity developed between us. But every time we had lunch we talked about Mozart. Dr Drese got to hear about that too, with the result that, after the three Monteverdi operas and the staging of Book 7 of the Madrigals, we did Idomeneo, and another Mozart production every year subsequently, including the early ones, such as Mitridate and Lucio Silla, right up until Ponnelle's untimely death. Meanwhile I was also doing other things, of course, with other directors: Fledermaus and Zigeunerbaron at Amsterdam, Handel operas, Beethoven's Fidelio, Weber's Freischütz, Schubert's miraculous Alfonso and Estrella, Schumann's Genoveve-I can't even list them all.

Vienna, 1987, Mozart's Idomeneo, conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt. The director by then was not Ponnelle but Johannes Schaaf. We made the acquaintance of a hitherto unknown Mozart. The piece itself was a discovery, a sixth to go with the five "great" Mozart operas that were commonly known at that time. Everything that you had written and said so many times about the chiaro-oscuro technique in connection with Mozart became clear to me then. The orchestra was not separated from the audience as if by a wall, the chorus at times sang from the gallery. It was a fantastically evocative performance. A new image of Mozart was born.

Yes, that's how it was. Nevertheless, I have no wish to be constantly recreating everything afresh, just rethinking the pieces.
I don't want simply to take over the ideas of my colleagues, or go into a shop and buy the score and that's that. I just can't do that. I want to think through a work, even if it has been played a thousand times before. It does not interest me whether a new image takes shape within the listener or not. I can't decide that, or rather sometimes I can, sometimes not. But that's not the object. The object is that I should offer evidence of what I know, do my duty in other words. I always do that. Even in the "Radetzky" March.

I have the feeling, which also emerges from your writings and interviews, that Monteverdi's Ulisse and Mozart's Idomeneo lie particularly close to your heart. Is that primarily the works themselves or the hero figures?

The works, I would say. Monteverdi's Ulisse is not a regular dramatic opera but an epic, and it seems to me an intriguing question whether it is possible to make opera from an epic. Monteverdi's other late opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea, is a genuine drama, and a hundred per cent guaranteed winner, even if it is done badly. But Ulisse, where there is no dramatic plot but epic events, and everyone knows what is going on, checking the opera against Homer as it were, that is an intriguing question. Mozart's Idomeneo is the opera that was always in the wings. "Why not Figaro?" or "Why not Don Giovanni?"
I was always being asked. But for Mozart himself Idomeneo was "the" opera, in the fullest sense of the word. Idomeneo is a successful synthesis of French tragédie lyrique and Italian opera. I think Mozart only attempted that just once, and Idomeneo is the only instance where the experiment was successful. That is what fascinated me. Why was that so? What makes this piece so moving and yet still so dramatic? The "Death Quartet" (Andrň ramingo e solo) is one of the most beautiful and grandest pieces of music that I know! Idomeneo is a work in which we are able to marvel at every one of Mozart's talents. In Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosě fan tutte Mozart always gave preference to one aspect over all the rest; in Idomeneo all the aspects are there. That, I feel, is something one-off and unrepeatable.

As an epilogue to our conversation, I would like to ask you about the future. The future for musicians, the future for music, our future.

As far as my own future is concerned, that is not going to last much longer. There is not a lot one can say about that. I would like to carry on making music for as long as my hearing is good and I have the strength, and as long as people get pleasure from listening. As to the future of the arts, nowadays I am a pessimist. More than a bit sad, actually. There is a general belief that art is merely an adornment to life, something that embellishes life a little. That is far from sufficient. Art is one of the two pillars upon which man's life rests, in the intellectual sense. One of the pillars is purposeful rationalism and logic. Art, though, is not purposeful; art does not have a purpose but it does have a meaning. There is something in art that cannot be explained by logic; something that cannot be dealt with in Darwinian terms. It is not possible to explain the purpose of a poem by evolution. The reason why people sing songs cannot be accounted for in the same way as why people go to a shop to buy apples or bananas. People have to sing or they would cease being people. The religious will say that this is a function of religion; the non-religious will say that the blessing of the Muse is in there somewhere. The Muse too has to come from somewhere, only no one knows from where. Bach and Mozart also came from somewhere, and Darwin does not explain their existence either. But to return to why I am a pessimist: because society and politics do not regard art as important. As a result, children don't get to partake of art. The first thing that is taken out of the curriculum is art. Not just music: an approach to life through music. Children no longer sing. In earlier times every child was singing by the time he or she was five; that was just natural. Nowadays children listen to music a lot, though it is questionable whether that is always music. The notion that only a select élite should concern themselves with art is unsound. Art is for everybody. A child cannot grow up without participating in the experience of making music. They say that a person can consider whether he or she wishes to take up playing the flute at the age of fifteen, but by then it is already too late. If someone has not experienced, along with his or her parents and companions, the necessity of music, the visual arts and poetry by the age of five or six, then that whole domain is going to sink. And if art disappears, then so does morality, and we turn into wild beasts.
I perceive that danger now, and that is why I am pessimistic. Every politician and everybody who has any role at all in bringing children up should stop and think what they are doing when they remove art.

Professor Harnoncourt, I gather that Don Quixote is one of your favourite figures. Do you also feel that you are him?

No, that would be too grand for me.

For my part, and on behalf of this large
audience, thank you for talking to us.