Music
“I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, or psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. […] Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existence.”
Igor Stravinsky
The Stratford International Festival of Words and Music is a celebration of the power of music to communicate more than itself. Music can, and should, speak to everyone, but the presentation of music devoid of context can rob it of its force – equivalent to the experience of an opera without knowing anything that has been sung.
The programming of concerts can present insuperable barriers for an audience leading to confusion and disengagement. Of course, music can be “explained” through programme notes, but such explanations rarely do more than complicate matters. The extra-musical is found in considerations of what a work meant to its composer and his or her community, and in its reverberation historically and culturally. Music at this Festival is about more than music, therefore. It’s about communication – primarily by those performers charged with breathing life into the invention of genius, but also by the Festival’s speakers, for whom music is, first and foremost, the language of ideas.
For more information on the Concerts and Festival’s themes for 2018, visit the 2018 Programme.