ABSTRACT
In the north, our quarrels start to cool down. To be composer in residence in the city of Huizinga is a great honour, and a source of much satisfaction, soothing and mellowness to me. Still that is not the main reason why, when I was asked the title of my as yet unwritten speech, such a rosy-smelling headline as the present one occurred to me. ‘Towards a new renaissance’ - it could scarcely be more unworldly. For in this century we have already been violently reborn a couple of times into a new paradise, and it just about happened that the Utopias raging in this part of the world left no stone standing.
