The formal opening of the Bergen International Festival

Translation from the Norwegian.
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Your Majesties,
Dear festival guests,

Has it ever been completely silent?

Right from the beginning there was sound.

The Swedish historian and author Peter Englund explores this topic in one of his many fine essays, Om tystnadens historia (the silence of history). One cold winter’s day in Uppsala, he suddenly stops, gets off his bicycle, and finds that he can hear the snow falling.

The main character in Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk’s novel Snow notices the same thing – in the north east of Turkey. Not only can we see that snowflakes have unique intricate patterns, but we can hear them too – a whispering.

But, has it ever been completely silent?

There is that brief moment before a concert starts, when the audience has stopped murmuring, all eyes are trained on the conductor, and we await that particular sound that we have chosen ourselves to come and listen to. Complete silence. Or is it?

Today we are surrounded by an extraordinary soundscape – the noise of traffic, aircraft and heavy machinery, music from our ipods, mobile phones, computer games, partying students, music festivals – a mass of sound, constant background noise, what some would describe as the accompaniment to modernity.

But is this truly a sign of our times? Being surrounded by sound? Is this something radically new? Was it quiet or quieter before?

Let’s go back in time to a city in the Middle Ages, a city such as Bergen. Imagine, smell, listen to the hustle and bustle in the market place, the shouts from the stalls, from the boats, the bakers, the beggars, the beggars, the invalids, the sounds of the horses, the carts, the blacksmiths, the carpenters, the stone masons.

And don’t forget – the sound of the church bells! A real orchestra. Seven hundred years ago, there were more than 20 churches and chapels here in Bergen, and five monasteries, all of which towered above the low wooden houses of the city.

They stood for power and authority. And they made themselves heard. The church bells rang to call people to church and to send them home again, to warn people of fire, to mark the changing of the watch, to tell the time, to set the rhythm of the days and the weeks, to announce holidays and highdays, and not least to tell people where they were. Just as the lighthouses would some centuries later.

The sound of the church bells created a map – a geography. They marked out the reach of each church. Each set of church bells had its own particular sound that set that church apart, gave it an identity, a logo, a brand.

It must have been phenomenal, quite overwhelming. What an instrument of power. During the French Revolution, attempts were made to stop the church bells. They were literally taken down and collected in – not just to be melted down to make weapons and carts, but to stop their power to spread information, to give warnings, to bring people together, to mobilise, to protest.

Sound is about power. And sound is what we use to communicate. But it is the particular diversity of sound that we are able to produce that characterises mankind’s voice – our polyphonic expression. It is said that the Grieg Hall is shaped like a grand piano. And so we – you and I – are perhaps the keys?

Without diversity, there can be no harmony. We – you and I – have different voices; we are different people. We are “tuned” differently, with differences in gender, age, skin colour, nationality, background, interests and skills. But here today, we have come together as a team; we are a “we” that loves music, culture. There may be considerable differences between us in taste and preference, but we have been brought together through our appreciation of music. Here in this hall today, and elsewhere in Bergen over the next days, there is more that unites us than separates us.

Thus culture opens up a way of understanding the meaning of “we”.

Who are “we?”

“We” should be seen as a unifying concept, a description of a group of people who have enough in common to define themselves as a community. At the same time, there will be significant variations, different characteristics, different timbres within this group.

It could be said that Norway’s greatest challenge and task – also our greatest opportunity – is to revisit the concept of “we”, to define a broad “we” that includes the diversity of today. A “we” that is relevant and representative. A “we” that breaks down the inherent tendency to talk of “us” and “them”. A “we” that is a subject, an actor with a will, that wants to achieve something – together. A “we” that, in Norway today, includes 460 000 immigrants, or 10% of the whole population. In Bergen too immigrants make up some 10% of the population, and in Oslo 25%.

It is all too easy to talk about “us” and “them” – “us” and “the others”. Culture can counteract this tendency. Norway as a nation of culture and Bergen as a city of culture have always depended on inspiration and new ideas from outside. This has been vital.

Artists have travelled abroad and brought back new skills and ideas that have enabled them to create something quite new. Edvard Grieg, the godfather of this festival, invited a world famous Dutch orchestra to Bergen 110 years ago. Tomorrow a completely new version of Brand by a Spanish director will be performed.

Good art is never national. National art so easily becomes narrow, complacent, barren. But an international framework allows national elements of art to build bridges, to find resonance in other cultural expressions, to seek common ground, a shared soundboard. A starting point for understanding the concept of “we”.

A couple of months ago, an American symphony orchestra performed in North Korea. It was the first Western cultural institution to do so for very many years. This was a gift to one of the world’s most closed countries. There was a slight opening of a door, an instrumental handshake across an icy border.

And think of Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and the young Israeli and Palestinian musicians who have played together and told their stories, despite the borders, the walls, the barriers.

Soon after the Berlin wall had been torn down in the autumn of 1989, musicians from east and west came together – once again – and gave a concert under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. One of the works they played was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Themes from this symphony have been used by French Republicans in the nineteenth century, and by Hitler during mass meetings and at the 1936 Olympics. Today, the theme An die Freude – which is based on Schiller’s poem – has become the anthem of the European Union.

In Oslo we can boast of the Norwegian Opera & Ballet and its (general manager and) artistic director Bjørn Simensen. He is just as well known in Milan as in Murmansk, including by the local people. Milan you could expect. But Murmansk? But this is the case, for here the Opera has established new contacts, exchanged experience, soloists and musicians, shown what Norway can do, performed in theatres and as well as in prisons, and has invited Russian artists to Norway.

Geography and politics inspire cultural performers. And culture inspires politics. Culture is thus an important element in modern foreign policy. For culture can build bridges over ravines and screes that traditional foreign policy is unable to.

And culture can help us to find new paths, new roads ahead, help us to open new doors and to step over new thresholds. And just that – staking out a path – is also important in foreign policy. Not arrogance, not an impulsive solo performance, not going off on our own, but taking an initiative in the areas where we have something to offer.

For the world is not characterised by a willingness to break new ground. Political action is in short supply. But sometimes, someone has to take the lead, set the pitch, strike the note for others to follow.

Like the violin virtuoso Ole Bull – atop the Great Pyramid of Giza. Like Ibsen’s formidable character Brand, who marched on up the threatening mountainside, while the bailiff and other villagers turned away and ran back down to the fjord to bring in the herring, put food on their tables and silver in their coffers. Like our national poet, Henrik Wergeland, with his unshakable belief in humanity, equality and all who are oppressed.

For we need people to do “the test run on the ski jump, to prepare the track”, as Lars Saabye Christensen describes in one of his poems. We need people who can strike a new chord, like the poet Olav H. Hauge. We need people like Helle Aarnes, who won the Norwegian Press Association’s journalism prize for his articles on the plight of women who had fallen in love with German soldiers during the war. Like Amin Maalouf, who is here at this festival, and who gives a voice to all those who are on the “other side”, the migrants, the refugees, the people who live at the great cultural and religious crossroads of the world.

People like Andrei Sakharov. He was born today, 21 May, 87 years ago. I met him in June 1987, just a few days after he had returned from his exile in Gorky. It was a very quiet meeting – almost silent. There wasn’t much that needed to be said. Sakharov had dared to speak out when it was forbidden to do so. Now he had been released, and was almost free. Everyone who had eyes to see realised that, with Sakharov out of exile and back in Moscow, something had changed for good. Something had certainly changed in me.

So, dear friends, we can say a great deal about sound.

About voices that will not be silenced, voices that dare to speak out.

Sounds that resonate, sounds that make a commotion, but also the sound of community, the sound of “we”.

For sound is important. Silence is something we should treat with more caution. Concealment, denial, the turning off of the microphone, the hands in front of the camera lens, restricted freedom of expression, the refusal to take part in dialogue.

For all these reasons – all honour to the Bergen Festival! Let there be a great sound!