From Another View

The Munich Biennale has seen itself as an international festival since it was founded over two decades ago. Internationality was never a mere external criterion, limited to the diversity of the composers’ and librettists’ home countries. To us, internationality is a question primarily of intellectual substance and aesthetic standards. During the course of these twenty-two years, when the Biennale has been involved in the creation of music theatre works and has presented them in the public arena with a unique continuity, global networks have advanced and spread at an extremely rapid pace. This meant that cultural traditions encountered one another with a speed and intensity that seemed to annul their growth over the centuries. The current modern trend is: life in two speeds. Economy and culture move asynchronously. Cultures do not allow themselves to fuse on a fast track. What is needed is for one to take on another viewpoint as one’s own, to try to understand what was previously foreign and unknown.

The music theatre projects fulfill the motto of the Twelfth Munich Biennale in different ways: In the Amazon project, the perspectives of the European dominators, of the indigenous preservers, and of those with questions about the future encounter one another. The composer Lin Wang understands life in the field of tension between Chinese and European traditions as a call to set out on a search, to abandon ingrained convictions, and to be receptive to an unconditional self-knowledge. Philipp Maintz composes the radically different perspective: Maldoror creates an image of the world from the perspective of evil. For his composition Márton Illés uses an early dramatic draft by Rainer Maria Rilke, reflecting the floating stage of expectation over an abyss of terrible deeds and infamy.

We are very pleased that the City of Munich continues to provide the foundation for the Biennale and to sponsor the Biennale as an essential part of cultural life. In addition, this year we were able to realize an up to now unparalleled magnitude of cooperations with, among other international institutions, the Goethe Institute; ZKM Karlsruhe; and SESC São Paulo, and funded by, among others, the European Commission and the German Federal Cultural Foundation. This means we not only gain leeway in regards to planning, we can also ensure that the works celebrating their world premieres at the Biennale will soon arrive at stages in different cities and regions. The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s sponsorship also enables us to complement the music theatre productions this year with a concert series featuring artistic portraits of the composers, and to invite orchestras to perform in the concert series that have distinguished themselves in particular by the presentation of New Music.

Peter Ruzicka