He never wanted to start a revolution, but one broke out and he was the unintentional cause of it: Nikolaus Harnoncourt's impact on our musical life is a permanent one, and is more powerful than that of any other interpreter of our day and age. His drama theory is significant as is the change in attitudes towards what is known as "early" music. A number of Harnoncourt successors, in many countries of the world, have taken up his "cause" in their own way, and not only among the younger generation; many of the conventionally active interpreters revealed themselves to be influenced to a greater or lesser degree by Harnoncourt's "new" perspectives. His impulses have had a far more comprehensive and intensive effect than he himself might have perhaps envisaged; than appeared possible to his collaborators on the gramophone recording side; than the skeptics surmised; or than his rivals were prepared to admit.

On his fiftieth birthday - which Harnoncourt celebrated in his own way in the middle of a concert tour through the Federal Republic of Germany with a recital in Darmstadt - on December 6, 1979, after thirty years of Concentus musicus activities and twenty-five years of recording work for TELDEC, an interim balance sheet clearly shows how his "revolution" in early music has developed. It is characterized by over one hundred gramophone records, with numerous prizes and awards. And there is a success which made the name of Harnoncourt a concept standing for critical fresh appraisal, excitement, also agitation, as well as a new appreciation of early music.

As early as 1945, the time when he was studying music as a cellist under Paul Gümmer, and from 1948 at the Vienna Academy of Music, Harnoncourt already wondered why early music sounded so boring. "I just could not understand what a musician got out of it if the kilometers of baroque music, which are only written in semiquavers, are simply reeled off." He, therefore, wanted to find out "what these Bach and Handel sonatas, which are constantly being played, really consist of." He occupied himself with old instruments, but more in the sense of a hobby; for as an instrumentalist he was working in a conventional manner as cellist with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra from 1952. Eventually, he could "no longer endure having to play the music, which is really close to my heart in a manner totally against my conviction."

With people of like mind, mainly from the circle of colleagues in the Vienna Symphony, (and in particular his wife Alice, the violinist who from the outset was the leader of the Concentus musicus) he established this special ensemble with old instruments. This was "not out of historical, but for artistic considerations, because the music of that epoch can be presented in the liveliest and most convincing manner with the tone media of that period." After four years of rehearsal work, the first public recital was given in 1957; six years after that, the ensemble made its first TELEFUNKEN recording ("Mannheimer Schule"), and two years later the first recorded St. John Passion in the original scoring, followed in 1967 by the recording of the Bach Orchestral Suites, and the first reproduction of Monteverdi's "Ulisse."

The enormous amount of gramophone productions which followed led to the erroneous view that the Concentus musicus was a studio ensemble, working under laboratory-like conditions to reconstruct the "old" sound, something which could have no place in music life. The fact was overlooked that every year beginning in 1958, the ensemble gave recitals in Palais Schwarzenberg in Vienna. The first foreign tour took place in 1960, followed by annual tours of Europe. Beginning in1966 the ensemble also toured through the United States of America. Engagements in Australia and New Zealand began in 1975. Harnoncourt was soon so popular that he was able to accept only a few concert engagements, since about this time he had begun to devote himself to scenic performances. He began with "Ulisse" in Vienna in 1971, produced Monteverdi's "Orfeo" the same year in Amsterdam, and "Ulisse" at the Piccolo Scala in Milan. Harnoncourt also produced operas and gave madrigal recitals (8^th Madrigal Book) at the Zurich Opera House, with a premiere performance each year. On March 1, 1980 in Zurich, he began a Mozart cycle with the sensational premiere of "Idomeneo." Handel's "Julius Caesar" (1978 in Frankfurt am Main) and "Jephtha" (1978 at the Corinthian Summer Festival) followed.

This was an immense workload, bearing in mind that in addition to editorial and organizational tasks Harnoncourt also had teaching duties. In 1972 , Harnoncourt began lecturing work at the Mozarteum Academy of Music in Salzburg and at the Musicological Institute of Salzburg University. Above all, he was involved in arranging gramophone recordings: Bach's complete cantata works was his first and grandest project. Routine cannot be of much help in the Harnoncourt recordings, since they are exclusively new recordings with the Concentus musicus, and are also new to Harnoncourt himself. Thus it is necessary to carry out detailed studies of the sources, then to engage in intensive rehearsals in order to assimilate the unusual aspects of the interpretation from work to work, from composer to composer. All that was done in such a manner that the unalterable vitality was added to the acquired and often laboriously achieved knowledge in a smooth and convincing way.

"Fidelity to the original? No: fidelity to the original is an absolutely catastrophically destructive element, which destroys the knowledge of the musician regarding performance practice by way of the notation. The letter takes priority over the sense. The phrase 'fidelity to the original' is given as the motive for according with the letter and i.e., the notes, are the work." This is a view which Furtwängler, a musician in the 19^th century tradition, could also have propounded. From the point of view of artistic intention, similarities can certainly be seen between Furtwängler and Harnoncourt, particularly concerning the intention to derive the utmost in expression from the music.

To a growing extent, Harnoncourt withdrew instrumentation from the center of his work in reproducing early music and concentrating on its interpretation. He says: "I am not a museum curator who is interested in how things were done at that time. I would not see any reason for me myself doing it in that way. It would be absurd within a completely different culture and a completely different society precisely to reconstruct a certain thing, which was connected with the culture and society of that time. One would then have to reconstruct everything, and it goes without saying that that would be pointless. I try to acquire as much knowledge abut the work as possible, its understanding and its reproduction, and then to make this work understandable for the present time with the maximum of my possibilities."

In this respect, the old instruments can most certainly be counted among the "maximum possibilities" - but then again, not "at any price." For firstly, according to Harnoncourt, there is "no historically correct or authentic version - that is impossible, an illusion or charlatanism." And secondly "one can play with a modern instrument far 'more baroque&' than with a baroque violin" if one does not completely master the old violin. As regards singing, the position is also that the capabilities are buried which are the preconditions for an appropriate reproduction of early works.

Harnoncourt says the interim stages existing between singing and speaking were even better mastered just two generations ago than they are today. "Formerly nearly every actor was also a singer", and vice versa: "The first operas musical history were perfect music theatre. In the second half of the 18^th century the opinion still prevailed that in the opera the art of acting is more important than singing technique." Thus in its significance, Harnoncourt's work has changed from opening ears for old sounds to appreciating their true shape - that is to say, not primarily of the tonal picture.

Harnoncourt is of the opinion that the concordance between composer and musicians, as well as interpreters and listeners, was something which formerly was taken for granted, but no longer exists today.The fixed notes might suggest to us a false assurance of knowing something which is simply not known; one only thinks so because one is unable to look behind the notes. It has become Harnoncourt's task to change this situation. This applies not only to the music of the renaissance or the baroque eras, by Monteverdi or Bach, Rameau or Biber, but also in the case of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Harnoncourt goes even further: "One is not safe against a capital misunderstanding of the written, notated work even in the case of Mozart or Brahms and Wagner." For this reason, Harnoncourt began to find out the "unwritten convention between the composer and the musicians" as regards Mozart, something which "involved enormous researches." The first Mozart performance was given in 1973 in Vienna - the E-flat Major Horn Concerto with Hermann Baumann as soloist. A recording followed. Gerhard Brunner asked the written question as to whether "Harnoncourt and his people will succeed in correcting our picture of Mozart as decisively as he corrected our picture of Bach. It will be a Mozart style of greater clarity, balance and transparency, a pungent style countering the romantic espresso - no doubt there are still some exciting discoveries in the offing."

In Holland, Harnoncourt began with orchestral Mozart interpretations and continued this work with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchester at the Mozart Week in January 1980, in Salzburg, before the Mozart opera cycle began in Zurich, again in collaboration with producer Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, as was the case with the Monteverdi operas. With this cycle Harnoncourt caused considerable and widespread excitement among those music lovers who otherwise have little to do with "early" music, the opera-goers. The fact that this gigantic success with Monteverdi resulted, and that there were also highly acclaimed guest performances of the entire works given by the Zurich Opera House in several major European cities, is one of those oddities or surprises which the music world persistently encounters in connection with the name of Harnoncourt.

Also with regard to Mozart, Harnoncourt has from earliest times pursued the possibility of producing his music free of any set moulds. "In my whole music life, I can recall only a single Mozart interpretation which really thrilled me, and that came from a gramophone record, which is actually tragic. It was a performance of the g-minor Symphony with the Marlborough Festival Orchestra under Pablo Casals. But I did not know that when I heard it."