Culture is never a still image. Culture is a movement, a process in which we thematize and negotiate our togetherness, among other things. Art opens the windows, the world comes in, we can look out, to bring Upper Austrian directional adverbs into play. Art awakens our senses, uplifts, entertains, irritates, raises questions, points us to the intangible, magical, enchanting, mysterious aspects of being human, art makes us marvel. Those who are amazed are never wrong, because there is no wrong amazement in real life. And in togetherness lies listening, a basic human and musical condition.
Ansfelden, the Traunviertel, is the habitat from which Anton Bruckner departs and to which he will always remain connected, even if the walls and places change in the course of his life. Changes of location promise growth spurts. It had to happen in the in-between land between pub and church, between narrowness and expanse, outside and inside. There, where a dialect is spoken that is still unmistakable today and rubs off on the sound of the people, or he on it. For Bruckner, the in-between becomes a zone, an area. He did not shed his rural origins, which had led him to become a teacher, the organist of Linz Cathedral and finally a lecturer at Vienna University, any more than he shed his wide-ranging dress or his clear dialect of origin.
The diversity that I have been able to experience and listen to in Upper Austria and around the world over the past few months is unheard of. I am thinking, for example, of the UNIverse ensemble, in which professional musicians, amateur musicians and music enthusiasts make music together under the direction of Petra Linecker and Andreas Huber. Each and every one of the 17 musicians contributes all their skills and great joy in making music to create a musical UNIverse together.
