Graz 1972 & 1982: between organizational impulses, critical resistance and generational conflicts = Graz 1972 & 1982: Zwischen organisatorischen Impulsen, kritischem Widerstand & Konflikten unter den Generationen

Since 1925, the annual ISCM festivals had migrated from city to city, country to country, but for the first time since 1961 it was now returning “home”. At stake was not merely a nostalgic retreat to the ISCM’s cultural Heimat, but rather a timely reaffirmation of the society’s core mission in the face of profound social-political upheaval occurring on a global scale. Since 1968, regional artists had been waging a battle against conservative Austrian politicians to secure additional support for their activities and to transcend the stigma of provincialism. At the global level, as is well known, the decade of the 1960s witnessed extreme political unrest of the most wide-ranging kind. The fundamental assumptions that undergirded New Music were being radically questioned by a younger generation of composers, performers and audiences, and membership of the ISCM reached an all-time low. Trying to address the generational divide, Friedrich Cerha gently noted in the introduction to the official programme booklet that: “These years have seen quarrel[ling] of groups, chauvinism, crises within the organisation and even stagnation, when the music was looking further ahead than the administrators.” Graz offered the opportunity for a restart.