MUSICA VIVA – the history
1989–2024
The festival was launched in 1989 as ‘Tage Alter Musik im Osnabrücker Land’ (Early Music Days in the Osnabrück Region) at the same time as the establishment of the North German study centre Forum Artium by its artistic director Herbert Vieth. This initiative enabled a music festival of international calibre to be established in western Lower Saxony for the first time.
The festival, which combines performance, scholarship and direct teaching in the form of numerous interpretation and masterclasses on the performance practice of early music, has given regional and national musical life numerous new and necessary impulses and has thus become an important cultural and image carrier for the Osnabrück region.
In 2005, Herbert Vieth, the artistic director and spiritus rector of the festival as well as founder and driving force behind the Forum Artium Academy, was honoured with the highly endowed cultural prize of the Landschaftsverband Osnabrücker Land.