Happiness shared is happiness doubled

How does one actually plan an hour of happiness? This is precisely the task the Beethovenfest’s Young Friends’ Circle has been set this year. For one of the Happy Hours in the Festival Salon, on Sept 18, we’ve been asked to develop a format that makes people happy. At first, it sounds surprisingly simple – after all, there are countless things that bring joy. But even after our very first meeting, we realised: happiness isn’t something you can simply plan. Or perhaps you can?

Anyone coming to a Happy Hour never knows exactly what to expect beforehand – and that’s precisely what gives it its special charm. The one-hour event, held before the concerts in the Beethovenhalle, is designed to help people get in the mood for the concert cosily at the Festival Salon. We, the members of the Young Friends’ Circle, were of course straight on board with creating our own Happy Hour. Our first idea was a dance workshop set to a Beethoven techno remix. But it soon became clear to us that we weren’t planning for ourselves, but for a very diverse audience: people just coming out of a concert introduction or a panel discussion, concert-goers in evening dress, regular festival-goers, the curious, people out on their own, and others spending the evening together. Some stay for an hour, others just a few minutes. How do you develop a format that is open to all of them?

With every meeting, new questions arose. Should there be more space for brief encounters or for longer conversations? How do you approach people without putting them under pressure? What small gestures might be enough to encourage strangers to strike up a conversation? And how do you create an atmosphere in which everyone feels welcome?

Alongside these questions of content, there were also some very practical challenges. How do you plan the catering when nobody knows exactly how many guests will be coming? Which materials are suitable for our ideas? How do you develop something that surprises, yet still works simply? Between lectures, exams, the summer holidays and lots of emails with the Beethovenfest team, we discarded, refined and rethought our ideas. Along the way, new members of the Young Friends’ Circle joined the planning team, bringing fresh perspectives, and even at our joint summer party we gathered final thoughts and suggestions for our project.

Throughout the planning process, we kept asking ourselves the same question: what actually makes us, as the Young Friends’ Circle, happy?

We realised that it isn’t the major programme highlights that make our get-togethers special. It’s the conversations before or after concerts, eating together, spontaneous encounters and the people we’ve got to know through our enthusiasm for music. Perhaps that’s no coincidence at all. Music brings people together, but it often takes a small occasion for a shared trip to a concert to turn into a shared conversation.

This gave rise to the theme of our Happy Hour: »Shared happiness is double happiness«.

Like any Happy Hour, ours thrives on little surprises. That’s why we don’t want to give too much away just yet. Suffice to say: there’ll be opportunities to strike up conversations, moments to make you smile and reflect, and perhaps even the chance to get to know someone you’d never otherwise have spoken to.

We’d love for you to pop along to the Festival Salon on 18 September from 6 pm to 7 pm!

Perhaps by the end, you’ll take home not only lovely memories of a concert evening, but also a new connection. Because sometimes it doesn’t take much to create happiness. Sometimes a conversation is enough.