'Outlaws of early music': Arthouse17 brings queer passion, migrant memory to Korea

Austrian ensemble on first Korean tour across five cities through Oct. 17

'Outlaws of early music' shake up hushed concert halls

'Queer Passion' retells Bach through the lens of LGBTQ+ persecution

"Applaud between movements, laugh onstage — we want that connection"

The melody of Bach's "St. John Passion" — a musical depiction of the suffering of Jesus — has not changed. What was rewritten, over music composed some 300 years ago, was the story. Where the biblical narrative of persecution once stood, the suffering of LGBTQ+ people took its place. At the 2022 Utrecht Early Music Festival in the Netherlands, the ensemble conjured onto the stage the persecution of gay men that had taken place in that very city in 1730 and 1731. The result was "Queer Passion," a work by Arthouse17, an early music ensemble based in Graz, Austria. In a world devoted to reviving centuries-old sounds on period instruments, they have earned the nickname "outlaws of early music."

"We take that as a compliment. It means we don't fit neatly into the existing mold — that we do something different. We like being different." (Arthouse17)

Arthouse17 is visiting Korea for the first time. The ensemble opened its tour Saturday at Goyang Aram Nuri, and will go on to perform at Art Center Incheon on Sunday, Sejong Arts Center on Wednesday, Daegu Concert House on Thursday, and Tongyeong International Music Hall on Oct. 17. All three co-artistic directors made the trip: harpsichordist and recorder player Michael Hell, writer and dramaturg Thomas Höft, and viola da gamba player Georg Kroneis. Soprano Sophie Deinmann and Grammy Award-winning baritone Dietrich Henschel will also take the stage.

The outlaws' only rule: be different

Early music generally refers to music composed up to the mid-18th century, revived through period performance practices and instruments such as gut strings made from sheep intestine. Faithful recreation of old sounds has long been the field's defining virtue — but Arthouse17 does not stop there. "Recreating a performance from 300 years ago exactly as it was is impossible," the ensemble says, "and perhaps that is not even the greatest value."

"We play early music on period instruments because we want to discover the sound world the composer was familiar with. But that is only the starting point. Knowing how instruments worked in the Baroque era, how tempos were set — that is just the basic framework a performance needs. Contemporary interpretation begins the very moment today's musician picks up the instrument." (Michael Hell)

Arthouse17's performances break with convention. The accordion — an instrument that did not exist in the Baroque era, patented in Vienna in 1829 — is a permanent fixture in the ensemble. Even when playing Handel's aria "Ombra mai fu," they twist the early-music template. Rather than the "authentic" approach of stripping out vibrato, they chose the style of 1930s musicians: strings laden with vibrato and glissando, the voice fuller and richer. The aria is a Persian king's song of praise to a plane tree. Why play it that way?

"Because it is extraordinarily beautiful. This strange love song to a tree, dressed in sounds unlike anything you normally hear in early music, became so much sweeter and more beautiful. That is one of the freedoms we enjoy when we approach music." (Michael Hell)

Their boldness does not come from abandoning history — it comes from reading it closely. Hell describes their approach as "a very historical one." Musicians of the past did not try to repeat a premiere performance when they revived a work. When a new singer stepped into an opera, the arias were changed to suit that singer. "It was always adapted to the circumstances of the moment, and that matters enormously to us," Hell said. "I hope the sound is different at every performance on this tour." The conventions are broken, but the spirit of the old musicians — always reinterpreting the music anew — is carried forward.

Pain from 400 years ago, pain of today

Music from the past is reborn carrying the stories of the present. Through music that once belonged exclusively to the courts and churches of the 17th and 18th centuries, Arthouse17 gives voice to the suffering of today's minorities and migrants.

Höft, who worked for more than 20 years as a dramaturg alongside early music master Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929–2016), borrows Harnoncourt's words to argue that "the humanism embedded in early music is universal."

"The pain people suffered 400 years ago and the pain people suffer today — the causes may differ, but the fact of suffering does not. If a work of art carries no human message, it should not be performed. We can use the artistic answers that people gave to human problems 400 years ago to answer the questions of today. Understanding, diversity, communication, peace — these have not changed, then or now." (Thomas Höft)

Arthouse17 sees early music as "a letter in a bottle" — a letter filled with emotion, cast into the current of time long ago. "Two hundred years ago, 400 years ago, they were human beings just like us."

"Remember Me," which makes up the second half of this tour, is a music theater piece that distills the ensemble's thinking. The group says it grew out of a commission from the Vienna Konzerthaus for Holocaust Remembrance Day. Rather than addressing the Holocaust directly, they describe it as "a more universal story about migration, exile and displacement" — the story of people who have left their homes and set out, amid uncertainty, to find a new place to belong.

"What they carry with them is melody. Songs made a hundred years ago, sung again and again to comfort those searching for a new home. You can lose what you have, but there are things you can never lose — memory and emotion. The music and melodies that hold those things tell us that hope is always there." (Thomas Höft)

Solemnity, too, is an outdated convention — time to wake the hushed hall

For an ensemble that has crossed so many boundaries, the solemnity of the classical concert hall is just another outdated convention.

"In the Baroque era, there was no such thing as a concert in the sense we know. The classical concert is a 19th-century invention." (Arthouse17) Music in that earlier age was part of theater, a ceremonial welcome for the powerful, a religious rite. That is why Arthouse17 moves beyond the convention of sitting still and playing instruments, weaving dance, theater and acrobatics into the fabric of their performances. Their guiding belief: "Sound is only the surface — behind it lies an entire world."

Arthouse17 does not impose conventions on its audiences either. The custom they most want to abolish is the prohibition on applause between movements. Symphonies typically have four movements, concertos three, and concert halls sometimes ask audiences to hold their applause until the end so as not to break the flow and immersion of the music.

"When a big recorder solo ends but the music keeps going, and the audience feels 'now is the moment' and starts to applaud — I would love that. Like people clapping in a jazz club. As long as it doesn't disturb those who don't want to. We want a more emotional connection with our audience." (Michael Hell)

Laughter, too, is a language that fills their stage. The ensemble has staged Bach's "Coffee Cantata" as a music theater piece, and last year in Utrecht they unpacked the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre through acrobatics and humor.

"Social media and politics are dividing society, and people are constantly fighting and arguing. We desperately need laughter and humor and joyful time spent together — humor that embraces everyone." (Thomas Höft)

Successful outlaws eventually become the mainstream. Arthouse17 does not shy away from that path. "Every successful revolution becomes a new mainstream. We are on that road," Höft said. "If we are becoming the mainstream, there is no reason not to." Even then, their gaze will point in the same direction. "When that time comes, we can wait and see what new things we create." (Thomas Höft) There is, however, one rule they will never break — a line left by an 18th-century music writer.

"He said that to move an audience, the performer must first be moved. That is the one thing we would not trade for anything in the world. If we are not moved while we play, there is no reason to play." (Arthouse17)

shee@heraldcorp.com