Classical music of the highest level, contemporary dance and film: that’s the KlaraFestival. Since 2011, the KlaraFestival programme has been examining the significance of the “human condition” from three perspectives: Utopia (2011), spirituality (2012) and melancholia. At the end of the sixteenth and seventeenth century a genuine epidemic of melancholia broke out in the England of Queen Elisabeth I. John Dowland knew how to transform this feeling into notes like no other composer did. Most of his songs, which he signed ‘Dolandi de Lachrimae’, are about tragedy and longing. Tears are music here. The melancholia in Dowland’s music is never oppressive. And so KlaraFestival puts this composer in the spotlight throughout the festival. Attention is devoted not only to his lute music, pavans and consort music, but also to the influence he had on his contemporaries and on later composers like Benjamin Britten, Paul Hindemith, Carl Rütti and even someone like Lisa Van der Aa. For a full ten days, together with our partners Klara, BOZAR, De Munt /La Monnaie, Flagey and CINEMATEK, we will be exploring the legacy of this major composer through his relationship to his predecessors, contemporaries and successors.

Moreover, everything can be followed non-stop on the radio via Klara and Musiq3, in the printed press via De Standaard and La Libre Belgique, abroad via the European Broadcasting Union and online on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and at www.klarafestival.be.

This musical explosion is offered to you by the Festival van Vlaanderen Brussel!