Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2021

Abstract

Darmstadt was a bit different this year. The original 1946 courses had 120 registered participants in situ; I was told that the number this time around was larger (around 140), but only just. As an announcement for the final post-concert wrap stated, this was the COVID-19 courses. So: much smaller, much more concentrated, with almost every performance streamed online, and every other seat in the concert hall marked off with a weird sort of police tape with the Darmstadt logo on it. It’s difficult to write about these things without lapsing into world-historical rhetorical posturing, as if the best lens to view the series of overlapping catastrophes we are living through is a biannual summer course for what, for better or worse, continues to be referred to as New Music. [excerpt]