Her er et foredrag, som jeg holdt for “Forældre for klassisk kultur” om den undervisningsmetode i klassisk musik komposition, som den unge komponist Alma Deutscher lærte for at udvikle sin musikalske kreativitet.
Det var den metode, der blev brugt til at undervise forældreløse drenge i Italien fra slutningen af 1600-tallet til slutningen af 1800-tallet, kaldet partimenti, og som nu er ved at blive genoplivet.
God fornøjelse!  

Og her er en baggrundsartikel, som jeg har skrevet:

Den dybereliggende proces bag Alma Deutschers musikalske geni

København 7. november

Schiller Instituttet vil gerne gøre Dona Nobis Pacem til temasang for den voksende bevægelse imod faren for atomkrig og for fred i verden.

Indledningen og interviews er på albansk, men nød musikken.
Read the English version below the Danish.

3. januar 2021 – En delegation af fantastiske albanske kunstnere fra Tirana, Albanien, gik sammen med en schweizisk-albansk pianist og to danske sangere om at indspille 50 albanske traditionelle sange, der var arrangeret af Lola Gjoka (Aleksi), den første albanske pianist. Lola Gjokas sange er en sammensmeltning af autentiske albanske folkesange og klassisk musik – en kulturskat, som nu efter syv årtier vil gense dagens lys.
Lola Gjoka (Aleksi) 1910-1985, var den første albanske pianist, og spillede en afgørende rolle for at bringe klassisk musik til Albanien. Lola arrangerede 50 albanske sange, baseret på autentiske albanske folkesange, der stadig var levende, som de blev sunget af lokalbefolkningen rundt om i landet. Lola Gjoka (Aleksi) skrev melodierne ned og komponerede derefter klaverakkompagnement til sangene, så det var så tro mod sangenes autenticitet som muligt. Disse sange blev en del af de klassiske koncerter, som hun gav sammen med de første bel canto-operasangere i Albanien.

I 1912 fik Albanien endelig sin uafhængighed efter 500 års brutal besættelse af Det Osmanniske Rige – en uafhængighed, der blev opnået mod alle odds. Da tyrkerne endelig var ude, forsøgte nabolandene alt, hvad de kunne, for at dele Albanien mellem sig, hvilket til dels lykkedes. Da vi endelig fik en nation, var ønsket om at komme ud af den ekstreme politiske, økonomiske og kulturelle tilbageståenhed levende i Albaniens sjæl og ånd.

Hvordan den klassiske musik fandt vej til Albanien
Lola Gjoka (Aleksi) blev født i Sevastopol på Krim. Hendes forældre var albanske indvandrere. Hendes far elskede at synge albanske folkesange, og han var en passioneret mandolinspiller. Han elskede musik og ønskede, at hans datter skulle have mulighed for at spille klaver, så han købte et klaver til Lola. Da hun var 9 år gammel, begyndte Lola at få klaverundervisning i skolen, og hendes klaverlærer var meget begejstret for Lolas musikalske talent. Lola Gjoka studerede på musikkonservatoriet i Sevastopol og havde et år tilbage, da hendes studier blev afbrudt. I 1932 blev der udstedt et ultimatum i form af en lov til indvandrerne: enten skulle de blive statsborgere i Sovjetunionen eller forlade landet. Familien var for patriotisk til at opgive deres albanske identitet, da de vidste, hvor hårdt det havde været for deres folk at opnå uafhængighed.
Derfor besluttede familien at vende tilbage til Albanien. Lola var 21 år gammel da hun ankom til Albanien som den første albanske pianist. Senere afsluttede hun sin uddannelse i Athen efter at have vundet en klaverkonkurrence i Wien.

Da Lolas familie forlod Krim, tog de klaveret med, da de vidste, at der ikke fandtes klaverer i Albanien. Turen endte tragisk, da Lolas lillebror døde på rejsen. Da de ankom til Korca i Albanien, hjalp gamle venner familien med at slå sig ned, og Lola begyndte at give undervisning til piger og drenge fra mere velhavende familier for at tjene til livets ophold for familien, som havde mistet hele deres opsparing på grund af hyperinflation.

Da Lola kom til Korca, var kimen til en kulturel renæssance allerede blevet lagt af den første albanske lyriske operasanger, Mihal Ciko, som var kommet tilbage fra udlandet i 1920’erne. Han var den første albaner, der studerede i Milano på Guiseppe Verdi-konservatoriet. Mihal skabte stor begejstring, og ikke kun i Albanien. Han deltog i den internationale folkesangskonkurrence på Fiera di Milano i 1924, hvor han fremførte albanske folkesange. Sange som aldrig var blevet sunget uden for Albanien før. Mihal Cikos fortolkning var så bevægende, at han vandt konkurrencen.

Lola Gjoka og Mihal slog sig sammen og flere operasangere kom tilbage til Albanien – sopranerne Jorgjia Felice Truja, Tefta Tashko, Maria Kraja, tenoren Kristaq Antoniu og barytonen Kristaq Koco. Kimen til en kulturel renæssance blev dannet, med Lola Gjoka i epicentret.

Den store pianist akkompagnerede alle sangerne i Verdi- og Puccini-arier, tyske sange og meget mere og albanske folkesange var ligeledes en vigtig del af koncerterne. Tefta Tashko og de andre sangere kom til Lola med sange fra forskellige dele af Albanien, så Lola kunne skrive dem ned og arrangere klaverakkompagnement til dem, med respekt for folkesangenes autenticitet. Lola Gjoka (Aleksi) og Tefta Tashko blev beskrevet som bier, der samlede honning fra alle de forskellige blomster i den albanske have.

Disse sange blev en kulturel skat, der fyldte folkets hjerter med skønhed, kærlighed, optimisme og håb om en bedre fremtid. Dette var starten på en kulturel renæssance i 30’erne og 40’erne, som varede i flere årtier.

I 1970’erne omarbejdede Lola sine sange endnu en gang, og hendes sidste ønske, inden hun døde i 1985, var, at disse sange skulle være tilgængelige for den nye generation. På grund af helbredsproblemer udgav Juki, Lolas eneste barn, først en bog med sin mors 52 sange i 2007, men de blev aldrig indspillet.

Jeg blev først introduceret til nogle af Lola Gjokas (Aleksi) sange af den schweizisk-albanske pianist Ermira Lefort, som kom til Danmark i 2019 for, sammen med mig, at opføre to af Lola Gjokas sange ved koncerten »A Musical Dialogue of Cultures«, arrangeret af Schiller Instituttet, Russisk-Dansk Dialog og Det Kinesiske Kulturinstitut. Ermira og jeg blev derefter af det danske konsulat i Tirana inviteret til at give en koncert med et dansk-albansk program. På grund af Corona blev koncerten udsat til den 5. juni 2021. Skæbnen ville, at Ermira ikke var i stand til at komme til Tirana, og jeg derfor havde brug for en erstatning. Det blev pianisten Rudina Ciko, og det var virkelig held i uheld.

Da jeg i maj havde mødt Rudina i Tirana, havde hun givet mig bogen med de samlede sange af Lola Gjoka (Aleksi). Det var nogle uger før vores koncert og indimellem havde jeg tid til at kigge på sangene og opdagede, at hver enkelt af dem var både speciel og meget smuk. Efter koncerten i Tirana, på vej tilbage til Danmark, fik jeg den idé, at disse sange burde indspilles. Hver sang var som en perle i en række af perler, der tilsammen udgjorde en smuk halskæde, Folk burde have tilgang til denne skat.

Gnisten, der ventede på at blive til rigtig ild
Jeg besluttede mig for at gøre mit for at få disse sange indspillet. Gennem Rudina Ciko mødte jeg hendes mand, dirigenten Zhani Ciko, søn af den berømte bel canto-sanger Mihal Ciko, Lola Gjokas (Aleksi) veninde. Zhani Ciko var et barn af den kulturelle renæssance og bar den levende arv fra den albanske kulturelle renæssance i sit hjerte og sind. Zhani Ciko organiserede også den første opførelse af Beethovens 9. symfoni i Albaniens historie i 1970’erne.

Da jeg fortalte Zhani idéen om at indspille alle Lola Gjoka (Aleksis) sange, blev han meget begejstret og begyndte straks at arbejde på at realisere den. Zhani organiserede en gruppe af talentfulde sangere, herunder den meget kendte sopran Mariana Leka, sopranen Erlinda Agolli, tenoren Gerald Murraj, barytonen Antonio Zefi og Rudina Ciko, der akkompagnerede på klaver. Sammen med den store pianist Ermira Lefort, den kendte danske tenor Stig Fogh Andersen og mig selv, en dansk-albansk sopran, blev der dannet en gruppe, som kunne realisere ideen.
Vi mødtes alle i Danmark for at gennemføre projektet. Takket være Knud Rasmussen, organist i Virum Kirke, så åbnede Virum Kirke sine døre for os, så vi kunne lave optagelserne der. Og takket være Stig Fogh Andersen, hans søn Ask og Stigs gode veninde Heidrun Beer, så fik vi gennemført optagelserne. Det lykkedes at indspille de 50 sange på mindre end fire dage den 27.-30. december 2021. Vi afsluttede optagelserne med at filme en lille koncert i kirken, da Corona gjorde publikum umuligt.

Indspilningen af disse 50 sange er en historisk begivenhed, da det aldrig er sket før. Udgivelsen af de samlede sange på en dobbelt-cd vil finde sted i slutningen af februar i år og vil ikke kun være en skat, der atter vil blive en del af den albanske kulturarv, men også en perle, der vil blive indføjet i den europæiske kulturskat.

Må cd’erne så være en inspiration til at holde mange koncerter og kulturelle udvekslinger mellem Albanien og mange andre nationer.

For at bestille kopier af cd’erne kan man kontakte Feride Gillesberg på: feridegillesberg@gmail.com.
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Udgivet i Executive Intelligence Review Volume 49, Number 6, February 11, 2022.

Download (PDF, Unknown)

Earlier article:

Historic Event in Copenhagen – An Albanian Musical Treasure Revived

By Feride Istogu Gillesberg

January 3, 2021 — A delegation of fantastic Albanian artists from Tirana, Albania, joined forces with a Swiss-Albanian pianist, and Danish musicians, to record 50 Albanian traditional songs, arranged by the first Albanian pianist, Lola Gjoka (Aleksi). Lola Gjoka`s songs are a fusion of authentic Albanian folk songs and classical music — a cultural treasure that will now see daylight, after seven decades.

Lola Gjoka (Aleksi) 1910-1985, was the first Albanian pianist, who played a crucial role in bringing classical music to Albania. Lola arranged 50 Albanian songs, based on authentic Albanian folk songs that were still alive, as sung by local people around the nation. Lola Gjoka (Aleksi) wrote down the notes, and composed the piano accompaniment to the songs, as truthful to the authenticity of the songs as possible. These songs became a part of the classical concerts she gave, together with the first bel canto opera singers in Albania.

In 1912, Albania finally got its independence, after 500 years of a brutal occupation by the Ottoman Empire — an independence achieved against all odds. When, finally, the Turks were out, the neighboring countries tried everything they could to divide Albania among them, which partly succeeded. When we finally had a nation, the desire for rising out of extreme backwardness, politically, economically, and culturally, was vividly in the soul and spirit of the people of Albania.

How classical music made its way to Albania

Lola Gjoka (Aleksi) was born in Sevastopol, Crimea. Her parents were Albanian immigrants. Her father loved singing Albanian folk songs, and he was a passionate mandolin player. Lola Gjoka’s father loved music and wanted his daughter to have the possibility of playing the piano, so he bought a piano for Lola. When she was 9-years-old, Lola started getting piano lessons at school, and her piano teacher was very excited about Lola’s musical talent. Lola Gjoka studied at the music conservatory in Sevastopol. She had one year left, when her studies were disrupted. In 1932, an ultimatum, in the form of a law, was issued to the immigrants: either become Soviet Union nationals, or leave the country. The family was too patriotic to give up their Albanian identity, knowing how hard the achievement of independence had been for their people. So, the family left to go back to Albania. Lola was 21 years old. She arrived in Albania as the first Albanian pianist. Later, she finished her diploma in Athens, after winning a piano competition in Vienna.

When Lola’s family left the Crimea, they took the piano along, since they knew that there were no pianos in Albania. The tour ended tragically, when Lola`s little brother died on their journey. Arriving in Korca, Albania, old friends helped the family settle down, and Lola began giving lessons to girls and boys of wealthier families, to make a living for their family, which had lost all their savings due to hyperinflation.

When Lola came to Korca, a seed for a cultural renaissance had already been planted by the first Albanian lyric opera singer, Mihal Ciko, who had come back from abroad in 1920s. He was the first Albanian who studied in Milan at the Guiseppe Verdi Conservatory. Mihal created a lot of excitement, not only in Albania. He took part in the international folk song competion in “Fiera di Milano” in 1924, where he performed Albanian folk songs, songs that had never been sung outside Albania before. Mihal Ciko’s interpretation was so moving, that he won the competion.

Lola Gjoka and Mihal joined forces. More opera singers came back to Albania — the sopranos Jorgjia Felice Truja, Tefta Tashko, Maria Kraja, tenor Kristaq Antoniu, and baritone Kristaq Koco. The seed of a cultural renaissance was formed, with Lola Gjoka in the epicenter.

The great pianist accompanied all the singers in Verdi and Puccini arias, German Lieder, and much more. Albanian folk songs were an important part of the concerts. Many traditional Albanian folk songs were written down by Lola Gjoka (Aleksi) who arranged piano accompaniments, carefully keeping the authenticity of the old folk songs. Tefta Tashko and the other singers would come to her with songs from different parts of Albania, so Lola could write them down and arrange piano accompaniments. Lola Gjoka (Aleksi) and Tefta Tashko were described as bees that collected the honey from all the different flowers in the Albanian garden.

These songs became a cultural treasure that filled the hearts of the people with beauty, love, optimism and hope for a better future. This was the start of a cultural renaissance in the 30s and 40s, that lasted for several decades.

In the 1970s, Lola reworked her songs once again. Her last wish before she died in 1985, was to have these songs available for the new generation. Due to health problems, Lola’s only child, Juki, first published a book of her mother’s 52 songs in 2007, but they were never recorded.

I was first introduced to some songs by Lola Gjoka ( Aleksi) by the Swiss-Albanian pianist Ermira Lefort, who came to Denmark in 2019 to perform two of Lola Gjoka’s songs with me at the concert, “A Musical Dialogue of Cultures,” organized by the Schiller Institute, Russian-Danish Dialogue, and the Chinese Cultural Center. Ermira and I were invited by the Danish consul in Tirana to give a concert with a Danish-Albanian program. Due to corona, the concert was postponed to June 5, 2021. As destiny played out, Ermira was not able to come to Tirana, and I needed a replacement. The pianist Rudina Ciko was her replacement, a blessing in disguise.

When I met Rudina in May in Tirana, she had given me the book with the collected songs of Lola Gjoka (Aleksi), some weeks before our concert. In between, I had the time to look through the collected songs, and discovered that each of them was very special and beautiful. After the concert in Tirana, on my way back to Denmark, I was thinking that these songs ought to be recorded. Each song is like a pearl in the row of a treasure necklace, and people should have access to this treasure.

The spark that waited to be transformed into fire

I decided to do my part to get these songs recorded. Through Rudina Ciko, I met her husband, the conductor Zhani Ciko, the son of the famous bel canto singer Mihal Ciko, Lola Gjoka ( Aleksi’s) friend. Zhani Ciko was a child of the cultural renaissance, and carries the living heritage of the Albanian cultural renaissance in his heart and mind. Zhani Ciko also organized the first performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in the history of Albania, in 1970s.

When I spoke to Zhani about the idea of recording all of Lola Gjoka (Aleksi’s) songs, he became very excited. He immediately began working on realizing this idea. Zhani organized a group of great singers, including the very well-known soprano Mariana Leka, soprano Erlinda Agolli, tenor Gerald Murraj, baritone Antonio Zefi and Rudina Ciko playing the piano. Together with the great pianist Ermira Lefort, Stig Fogh Andersen, a very well-known Danish tenor, and myself, a Danish-Albanian soprano, a group was formed that could realize the idea. We all met in Denmark to carry out the project.

Thanks to Knud Rasmussen, the organist at Virum Church, the church opened their doors for us to make the recordings there. And thanks to Stig Fogh Andersen, his son Ask, and his good friend Heidrun Beer, we were able to make the recordings. Thanks to all the musicians, we succeeded in recording the fifty songs in less than four days (December 27- 30, 2021).

We concluded by holding a little concert.

This recording is an historical event, as it has never been done before. Publishing Lola Gjoka (Aleksi’s) collected songs on a double CD in the spring of this year will not only be a treasure that will be given back to the Albanian cultural heritage, but, also, be a pearl to be added to the European cultural treasure.

May the CDs be an inspiration for many concerts and cultural exchanges between Albania and many nations.

To order the CDs, contact Feride Gillesberg at: feridegillesberg@gmail.com

Billede: Lejla Pula, klaver, med Kosovar Philharmonics (Trincoll2014, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

På tysk:

„Kosovo eine Brutstätte musikalischer Talente“

Interview mit der Pianistin Lejla Pula aus Prishtina

Mag. Lejla Pula, Pianistin und Klavierprofessorin an der Kunstfakultät in Prishtina, ist sowohl Präsidentin der „Kosovo Chopin Assoziation“ als auch Künstlerische Leiterin des „Chopin Piano Fest“ in Prishtina.

Feride Gillesberg: Bei meinem letzten Besuch in Kosovo hat es mich sehr positiv überrascht, daß es in Kosovo eine Handvoll Musiker gibt, die für die klassische Musik brennen. Eine von diesen bist du. Was möchtest du dazu sagen?

Lejla Pula: Es ist schön und hoffnungsvoll, wenn man so eine Aussage hört. In Kosovo haben wir eine Grundbasis von 40 Jahren höherer Ausbildung im Bereich der klassischen Musik und Kunst, und man kann sagen, daß wir heute Fachschulen für verschiedene Bereiche der musikalischen Künste haben, wie die Interpretation verschiedener Instrumente, die Komposition, das Dirigieren, Musikalische Pädagogik usw. Seit der Studienzeit und danach ab den 80er Jahren als Teil der Unterrichtsgruppe der Kunst-Akademie in Prishtina bin ich bis heute aktiver Teilnehmer an der Ausbildung der Künste. Als Pianistin und Interpret der klassischen Musik war und bin ich fortwährend auf der Bühne in Kosovo präsent, habe aber auch Kosovo auf der internationalen Bühne vertreten.

Gillesberg: Kannst du uns einen Überblick geben, wie es mit der klassischen Musik in Kosovo aussieht?

Pula: Die Realität in der Gesellschaft in Kosovo ist leider so, daß noch die notwendige Offenheit fehlt, welche ermöglichen würde, daß die Künstler, insbesondere die der klassischen Musik, frei atmen können – in dem Sinne, daß die echte Kunst nicht ihren Platz in unserer Gesellschaft bekommt, den sie verdient. Die professionelle Kunst verlangt bestimmte Bedingungen für die szenische Aufführung, die Ausstattung mit Instrumenten, angemessene Konzertsäle sowie andere Arbeitsmittel, die nicht garantiert werden, weil es die erforderliche Bereitschaft, Verständnis und Bewußtsein dafür nicht gibt. Die kulturellen Institutionen bemühen sich um ihre Arbeit. Sie betrachten es als machbar und notwendig, im Rahmen unserer Gesellschaft, wie auch der kulturellen Entwicklung als ganzes, Unterstützung für die Künstler zu finden – diese Hilfe ist jedoch minimal und unzureichend.

Klassische Musik, das künstlerische Schöpfen und Kunst im allgemeinen, spiegelt die Ebene der kulturellen Entwicklung einer Gesellschaft und eines Volkes wider, und es sind sehr wichtige Segmente für die Gesamtstruktur einer Gesellschaft.

Diese verlangen auf jeden Fall eine besondere Achtung, denn Errungenschaften werden als Teil des kulturellen Erbes einer Nation zurückbleiben.

Gillesberg: Was für eine Rolle hat die klassische Musik für Kultur?

Pula: Mein Volk hat eine Ader und besondere Sensibilität für Musik im allgemeinen, aber auch für klassische Musik. Ich arbeite seit über 30 Jahren als Konzertpianistin, aber auch Ausbilder in diesem Bereich. Ich kann Ihnen sagen, daß Kosovo ein Schatz, eine Brutstätte musikalischer Talente ist. Da ist eine große Begeisterung bei Lehrern im Bereich der Kunst, so wie auch bei den Studenten. Trotz der schweren Bedingungen, dem Mangel an Instrumenten, der perspektivlosen Aussichten dieses Berufs, versuchen wir Festivals und verschiedene Konzerte zu organisieren. Das Epizentrum dieser musikalischen Aktivitäten sind bis heute begeisterte professionelle Musiker, die viele Künstler aus aller Welt einladen, in unserer Hauptstadt zu spielen. Für jedes Festival werden Dutzende von Konzerten mit einheimischen und ausländischen Künstlern mit großer Mühe, Opferbereitschaft und unter großen Schwierigkeiten organisiert. Dieses Mitwirken im Organisieren unseres kulturellen Lebens ist für uns sehr wertvoll und unersetzlich. Eines davon ist auch das Festival „Chopin Piano Fest“, das ich mit meinen Kollegen leite und das jedes Jahr in April statt findet.

Gillesberg: Welche Rolle spielt die klassische Musik für den Aufbau einer Nation?

Pula: Gerade die Pflege der kulturellen Werte einer Gesellschaft ist der Zeiger, der am glaubwürdigsten die Entwicklungsebene einer Zivilisation anzeigt. Es ist bekannt, daß das stolze Volk Kosovos eine sehr schwere Zeit und schwere Ereignisse durchgemacht hat. Wir haben sehr viel in unserem Bereich gelitten [1991-99]. Alle Unterrichtsgebäude waren geschlossen und wir mußten mit allem improvisieren. Wir haben aber „überlebt“ als Akademie und als Gesellschaft und erfreuen uns des Lebens in unserem unabhängigen Staat. Dank unserer Kriegshelden, aber auch der Arbeitenden, denn wir haben alle unsere Arbeit mit Hingabe, Aufopferung und Selbstlosigkeit unter diesen rauhen Umständen gepflegt.

Ich bin aus persönlicher Prüfung, aber auch aus meinen inneren Glauben an den Menschen, fest davon überzeugt, daß man mit gutem Willen, Hingabe und Beharrlichkeit erreichen kann, was unmöglich erscheint.

Gillesberg: Was würdest du gerne den Menschen in Deutschland sagen, denn die meisten dort kennen Kosovo nur aus politischer Sicht?

Pula: Optimismus und Hoffnung sind die Eigenschaften, welche die Künstler ausmachen, denn so eine Kunst ist seelische Nahrung und entwickelt die erhabenen Gefühle der Menschen.

Ich bin davon überzeugt, daß unsere Gesellschaft, und auch unsere Künstler in Kosovo, auf bessere Tage zugehen, weil sie es sich durch harte Arbeit und selbstlose Hingabe verdienen.

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Klassische Musik richtet sich nach Naturprinzipien

von Feride Istogu Gillesberg

Am 11.-12. Dezember 2015 fand in der dänischen Hauptstadt Kopenhagen ein Symposium statt zum Thema „Fortgeschrittene Einschätzung der Stimmfunktionen in Europa: Resonanz der menschlichen Stimme & Neurowissenschaft und Stimme“ („Advanced Voice Functions Assessement in Europe – Resonance of the human voice & Neuroscience and voice“). Es war das sechste Symposium dieser Art, das von der Europäischen Kooperation in Wissenschaft und Technologie (European Cooperation in Science and Technology, COST Action 2103) veranstaltet wurde. Ärzte, Künstler und Musiker aus verschiedenen Nationen waren vertreten. Das Programm war sehr kompakt. U.a. hielt dort Josipa Bainac einen Vortrag über die wissenschaftliche Stimmung, die ein wichtiger Bestandteil der menschlichen Stimme ist. Ihre Rede beruhte auf zweijährigen Untersuchungen der Autorin. Ich hatte die Freude, Frau Bainac für die Neue Solidarität interviewen zu können.

Neue Solidarität: Frau Josipa Bainac, ich hatte die Möglichkeit, Ihren spannenden Vortrag auf dem Symposium in Kopenhagen anzuhören. Wollen Sie sich kurz vorstellen?

Josipa Bainac: Vor ungefähr zwei Jahren habe ich meinen Abschluß an der Universität für Musik in Zagreb, Kroatien, als klassische Sängerin und Pädagogin gemacht. Seit 2014 studiere ich Lied und Oratorium im Masterstudium an der Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien. Seit meinen Studien in Kroatien habe ich mich intensiv für verschiedene Interpretationstechniken interessiert und mich viel mit Stimmeigenschaften und Gesangstechnik beschäftigt.

Neue Solidarität: Wie sind Sie darauf gekommen, mit der wissenschaftlichen Stimmung zu arbeiten?

Bainac: Als klassische Gesangsstudentin habe ich viele Konzerte gesungen, von Orchestern, Klavier, Cembalo oder Orgel begleitet. Nach jahrelangen Erfahrungen habe ich bemerkt, wie sich das subjektive Gefühl für die Stimme und die Gesangstechnik ändert, wenn ich mit verschiedenen Begleitinstrumenten oder Ensembles auftrete. Bald habe ich erfahren, welche Rolle die Stimmung und die Standardtonhöhe in der historische Musikpraxis hat, und durch Gespräche mit meinen Kollegen – Sänger und Sängerinnen – habe ich erfahren, daß sie manchmal bei der Interpretation unter verschiedenen Stimmschwierigkeiten leiden, z.B. wegen der zu hohen Standardtonhöhe -, wenn der Künstler lange Proben oder Auftritte singen muß.

Als mein Masterarbeitsthema habe ich deswegen geschrieben über „Die historische Entwicklung der Temperatursysteme und die Standardtonhöhenauswahl im Zusammenhang mit der Gesangstechnikentwicklung und Stimmgesundheit“. Am Anfang war ich leider in den Untersuchungsmöglichkeiten begrenzt. Das war aber nur der Anfang meiner Arbeit zu dieser Frage, die ich als eine Pilotstudie in Kopenhagen präsentiert habe.

Neue Solidarität: In Ihrem Vortrag wurde erwähnt, daß in Kroatien Aufnahmen gemacht wurden, um den Unterschied der verschiedenen Stimmungen zu demonstrieren. Warum findet so ein Prozeß in Kroatien statt, gibt es ein besonderes Interesse in diesem Feld?

Bainac: Ich habe mit dem Studium dieses Themas in Kroatien angefangen. Und während des Studiums war ich im Kontakt mit Wissenschaftlern und Persönlichkeiten, die die technischen Möglichkeiten haben, wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zu machen. Leider gibt es in Kroatien nicht so viel Interesse zu diesem Thema, und deswegen war es kompliziert, meine Arbeit wirklich zu entwickeln, aber hier in Wien habe ich mehr Unterstützung.

Neue Solidarität: Das Schiller-Institut führt seit Jahrzehnten eine Kampagne für die wissenschaftliche Stimmung. Wie sehen Sie die Bedeutung der Verdi-Stimmung?

Bainac: Wenn man über die Stimmung spricht, muß man zwei wichtige musikalische Aspekte ins Auge fassen: die Standardtonhöhe („Kammerton“) und das Temperationssystem. Beide haben sich im Lauf der Zeit unabhängig voneinander entwickelt und oft gewechselt.

Man sagt oft, im Zusammenhang mit der historischen Interpretation, daß das Temperationssystem eine große Bedeutung für das Verständnis der harmonischen Struktur und anderen Musikkomponenten hat.

Leider vergessen wir oft die Bedeutung der Standardtonhöhe. Die Instrumente wurden im Laufe der Zeit für die neuen, oft höheren Standardtonhöhen umgebaut oder optimiert. Mit der Stimme ist es leider nicht so einfach, und bei der Interpretation von Repertoire, das für eine andere Standardtonhöhe komponiert war, kann dies zu Schwierigkeiten und in extremen Fällen zu Verletzungen führen. Die ästhetischen Fragen werden heute, aufgrund der Art, wie heute Musik konsumiert wird, übersehen.

Giuseppe Verdi war nicht nur Komponist, sondern auch Sänger – ein Bariton, der die Gesangstechnik gemeistert hat und mit diesem Wissen sehr sorgfältig die Musik für Sänger geschrieben hat. Es ist bekannt, daß er auch sehr genau und streng mit seinen Mitarbeitern – Librettisten usw. – gearbeitet hat.

Während den Überlegungen, was die universale Standardtonhöhe sein sollte, hat sich Verdi für die französische Standardtonhöhe (a’ = 435 Hz) eingesetzt. Er wurde aber kurz danach für die Standardtonhöhe a’ = 432 Hz gewonnen, wegen ihrer wissenschaftlicher Genauigkeit, wie in seinem Briefwechsel nachzulesen ist.

Nach vielen Besprechungen mit Wissenschaftlern und Mathematikern kam ich zu der Meinung, daß es wirklich keine wissenschaftlichen Beweise gibt, die bestätigen könnten, daß eine Frequenz gegenüber einer anderen Vorteile hat.

Ich habe dann mit renommierten Sängern und ihrem Repertoire experimentiert. Und aufgrund von objektiven und subjektiven Bewertungen habe ich dann festgestellt, daß die Standardtonhöhe von 432 Hz, wenn sie z.B. bei der Interpretation von Verdis und Mozarts Opernarien verwendet wird, viele Vorteile vor den heutigen 443 Hz hat.¹ Für ausgezeichnete Sänger, die keine technischen Probleme haben, sind auch immer die Passaggionoten zwischen den Stimmregistern problematisch. Wenn man den Kammerton von 432 Hz nimmt, werden die Vokale runder und natürlicher gesungen – coperto. Das verschiebt die Formanten tiefer und macht den Weg zu den Passaggionoten günstiger, denn die Stimmqualität des Passaggiobereichs zwischen den Stimmregistern kommt in dieser Stimmung früher. Das ist natürlich auch mit dem Text verbunden, der so vertont ist, daß die Bedeutung durch Registerwechsel unterstrichen ist.

Bei 443 Hz kommt die Passaggio in der Stimme abrupt, weil die Sänger oft in dieser Stimmung hellere Vokale – auch in der Passaggiotransition – singen. Natürlich versuchen die Sänger immer, den Formantenbereich mit den Obertönen zu verbinden, aber in der tieferen Stimmung macht der Körper das unbewußt und ganz natürlich durch die Rundung des Vokaltrakts. Die Sänger bewerten diese Standardtonhöhe von 432 Hz als die, die ihnen mehr Stimmfreiheit, Flexibilität, schönere Farbe, Stimmleichtigkeit anbietet. Bei 443 Hz macht der Sänger das alles bewußt – mehr oder weniger erfolgreich.

Neue Solidarität: Unsere Organisation legt großen Wert auf die klassische Kultur. Wie sehen Sie die Rolle der klassischen Musik, welche Bedeutung hat sie für die Entwicklung einer Gesellschaft?

Bainac: Musik ist immer ein bedeutender Aspekt jeder Zivilisation, ob man über Ritualmusik oder über unsere raffinierte und durch Jahrhunderte entwickelte europäische Musik spricht. Das sind alles im einfachsten Sinne Kombinationen von Frequenzen, die nach der Kenntnis des Komponisten so arrangiert sind, daß sie eine gewisse Wirkung auf den Zuhörer haben. Meiner Meinung nach werden diese Grundprinzipien der europäischen Musik heute von den Interpreten und auch von den Komponisten ignoriert. Man kann auch oft die sinnlose Phrase hören, daß im Bereich der klassischen Musik schon alles gesagt sei, alles schon komponiert sei, und deswegen muß der Zuhörer heute verschiedenste intellektuelle Durchfälle von den Komponisten dulden. Das kommt leider seit dem 20. Jahrhundert aus dem Bedürfnis, alles zu quantifizieren – am besten gleich auf Profit umrechnen. Und die Komponisten und Interpreten haben sich nur auf den leichtgewonnenen Affekt des Publikums und persönlichen Erfolg ausgerichtet.

Die Tatsache, daß Musik ein Naturphänomen ist, das schon lange vor der Menschlichkeit existiert hat, muß man wieder entdecken. Dann sehen wir, daß diese Quelle unerschöpflich ist. Deswegen würde ich klassische Musik nicht nur als Musik aus einer gewissen Periode bezeichnen, sondern als Musik, die sich nach Naturprinzipien richtet, die eine objektive und positive Wirkung auf uns hat.

Neue Solidarität: Haben Sie noch eine paar abschließende Gedanken für unsere Leser?

Bainac: Wie immer haben auch wir in unserer Zeit gewisse kulturelle Probleme und Fragen. Die klassische Musik ist heute ganz populär und für die Massen zugänglich geworden. Das könnte auf den ersten Blick auf die Welt der klassischen Musik eine gute Wirkung haben. Leider hat es sich aber gezeigt, daß das breite Publikum sich nur auf die oberflächlichen Aspekte der Musik orientiert. Und die natürliche Wahl der Künstlern – Interpreten oder Komponisten – ist damit verschwunden. Deswegen liegt heute bei uns, wie wir Musik und alle anderen Künste unterstützen; daß wir wirklich nur das hinterlassen, was wir für die nächsten Generationen wertvoll finden.

Neue Solidarität: Vielen Dank für das Interview!

Anmerkung

1. International sind z.T. noch höhere Stimmungen üblich, aber bei den Untersuchungen in Wien wurden akustisch nur 432 Hz und 443 Hz detailliert analysiert.

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This article appears in the March 5, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Beethoven and Creativity

by Michelle Rasmussen

[Print version of this article]

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Lithograph by August von Klöber, 1818

Ludwig van Beethoven

Feb. 23—If there was one principle at the center of Lyndon LaRouche’s life’s work, it was that the crucial factor in the progress of human civilization is human creativity. It is human creativity which distinguishes man, and woman, from the beast. It is, or ought to be, the mission of society to foster the potential creativity, which, like a seed, lies dormant in every child, just waiting for loving nourishment to cause it to bloom, to create the most beautiful flower, which, in turn, delights and inspires all others to, themselves, develop their own creative potential. But, you may ask, how do you learn about, and teach creativity?

There is perhaps no better creativity teacher than Ludwig van Beethoven, he who was born 250 years ago, in another time, in another place, whose life-long struggle to perfect his own creative powers, has been, is now, and will forever be a monumental source for the study of creativity. This he was for LaRouche, who would often listen to Beethoven to get his creative juices flowing before sitting down to write. And this he can be for you, dear reader, and all of us, so that we may, also, be creative, that we may “Think like Beethoven.”[fn_1]

And what is the purpose of such creativity? As Beethoven put it, “to work by means of my art for needy humanity.”[fn_2] Not art for art’s sake. Beethoven, like Friedrich Schiller, was conscious of great art’s ability to raise the moral level of humanity, to better enable human beings to form a more perfect society, one where, in Schiller’s immortal words, “All men become brothers,” the very words which Beethoven set to music in his Ninth Symphony.[fn_3]

Beethoven wrote that art and science, “Give us intimations and hopes of a higher life” to unite “the best and noblest people,” and to “raise men to the Godhead.”[fn_4]

To a female friend, urging her to devote herself entirely to music, he wrote: “You who have such feeling for all that is beautiful and good. Why will you not make use of this, in order that you may recognize in so beautiful an art the higher perfection which sheds its rays even on us.”[fn_5]

Concerning his immortal mass, the Missa Solemnis: “In writing this great Mass, it was my chief aim to awaken, and to render lasting, religious feeling as well in the singers as in the hearers.”[fn_6]

Plato wrote that music was the most important education for the soul—to fill the soul with beauty, and make it beautiful. People would then praise beauty, receive it with joy into their souls, and become beautiful souls.[fn_7]

Beauty, Schiller said, ennobles our emotions and our intellect. Not just raw emotions which dominate us, without intellect and reason. Not just intellect and reason, without compassion and agapē—love for our neighbor. But through the freedom of mind and heart, which arises while in the act of play, and especially when experiencing the beauty of great art, the two sides of our nature can be reconciled by rising to a higher, subsuming state of mind, which we call the aesthetical state of mind.

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Friedrich Schiller, in a portrait by Ludovike Simanowiz.

Beethoven quoted Schiller’s play Don Carlos in a letter from 1797: “Wisdom is for the wise, Beauty for the feeling heart; and both belong to each other.” (Die Wahrheit is vorhanden für den Weisen, Die Schönheit für ein fülend Herz; Sie beide gehören für einander.)[fn_8]

Beethoven wielded his creative powers to touch our souls through the beauty of his music.

The Creative Process

To be creative is a process of perfecting the ability to imagine what no one before you has ever thought about. In modern terms, to think “outside of the box,” the box of “This is how it has always been done,” “These are the rules,” “These are the unquestionable doctrines.” And, to be self-conscious about how to do that. But how do you put yourself into a state of mind, where you can think freely? How can you become self-reflective about the creative process and look into your own mind?

The thought process we call the imagination, is not only the key to creativity in the arts, but, also, in scientific discovery. Lyndon LaRouche put it this way in a speech called “Creativity as Such,” in 2011:

And it’s in the process of metaphor, in which we acquire access to experimental knowledge and use of principles which lie outside the domain of sense-certainties, that mankind distinguishes himself from the beasts…. This is the special genius of Classical musical composition…. [Y]ou look at the question of irony, and you take the case of a Bach fugal composition as the perfect test to demonstrate this.… This aspect of the human mind is the location of human creativity. And the promotion of that aspect of the human experience, Classical artistic culture as an expression of the principle of metaphor, is the principle of ordinary discovery, principled discovery. And when you take this kind of thinking over into the department of the practice of physical science, the same thing! And there, you have an example of the role of Classical musical composition, as in the illustrative cases of both Max Planck and Albert Einstein, in particular—and [Vladimir] Vernadsky also! You get a demonstration that in the department of Classical artistic composition, in which the mind is experimenting with the attempt to discover principles, and expresses the yearning for that experimental result as the incentive of creativity for the human mind. That is creativity.[fn_9]

Albert Einstein, better known as a great scientist, lesser known as a devoted amateur violinist, made his greatest discoveries not in a laboratory, but through “thought-experiments.” He had an intriguing insight into the power of the imagination, which he used to make his discoveries, and, also, the power of music to stimulate his own imagination.

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Photo by E.O. Hoppe

“The power of imagination is the ultimate creative power.”
—Albert Einstein.
When he became stuck in solving an intellectual problem, Einstein often played his violin to liberate his mental powers.

Einstein:

The power of imagination is the ultimate creative power … no doubt about that. While knowledge defines all we currently know and understand … imagination points to all we might yet discover and create. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.[fn_10]

Imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.[fn_11]

Imagination is the language of the soul.[fn_12]

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.[fn_13]

Einstein recounted that when he became stuck in the process of solving an intellectual problem, he would play his violin, and that would often liberate his mental powers.[fn_14]

Beethoven wrote this about the challenge of writing fugues in his late quartets: “The imagination, too, asserts its privileges and today a different, truly poetic element must be manifested in conventional form.”[fn_15]

In 1823, Beethoven wrote suggestions on how to stimulate the imagination to Archduke Rudolph, one of his very few composition students, and an important financial and political supporter:

I hope that Your Imperial Highness will continue to acquire special practice in writing down your ideas straightaway at the piano; for this purpose there should be a small table next to the piano. Not only is the imagination strengthened in this way, but one also learns to pin down the remotest ideas at once, it is likewise necessary to write without a piano. Nor should it give Yr. Imperial Highness a headache, but rather the considerable pleasure of finding yourself absorbed in this art, to elaborate a simple melody at times, a chorale, with simple and, then again, with more varied figurations in counterpoint[fn_16] and so forth to more difficult exercises. This will certainly not give Your Royal Highness a headache, but rather, when one finds oneself absorbed in art, a great pleasure. Gradually we develop the [ability to] express just exactly what we wish to, what we feel within us, a need characteristic of all superior persons [noble-minded men in A.C. Kalischer’s translation].[fn_17]

This power of the imagination involves our ability to think about the future, about how something could be, not bound by what is, in the here and now.

The concept of the imagination is related to forecasting the future effects of current causes, as in LaRouche’s economic forecasts, in which he always proposed alternative courses of action to avoid the dangers stalking in the future as the result of current wrong policies. And, likewise, deciding what to do in the here and now, based on your vision of where you want to arrive in the long-term future, the “future determining the present,” as he put it.

In classical music, imagining the future requires, on the one hand, having an insight into the pregnant possibilities of a single new musical theme or motive, but, on the other hand, the ability to invent a musical idea, which is not a theme, but a generative, developmental process, a specific quality of change—the real subject of a unified composition, which acts upon the themes as objects of creative transformation.

The seed-crystal of this development process is in the mind of the composer from the very beginning.

Beethoven from 1815: “I have always a picture in my mind, when I am composing, and work up to it.”[fn_18]

Regarding his opera Fidelio, “my custom when I am composing even instrumental music is always to keep the whole before my eyes.”[fn_19]

There is a tension between what Plato called “the one and the many”: the one unifying musical idea, and the many motives, developments, and transitions—the unfolding of the unified idea. The great German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler spoke of the tension between near-hearing (nahhören), the music heard at that moment as it is unfolding, and far-hearing (fernhören), the future, completed, composition.

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EIRNS/Philip Ulanowsky

“The seed-crystal of the development process is in the mind of the composer from the very beginning.” Norbert Brainin, primarius of the Amadeus Quartet, described and demonstrated the process of motivic thorough composition, the subject of Beethoven’s enormously fruitful musical creativity. Here he is (right), with his long-time friend, Lyndon LaRouche, on December 4, 1987.

Beethoven was a master of this process, which we call motivic thorough composition or, in German, motivführung. Just think about the first movement of his Fifth Symphony, and how the first famous four notes—da, da, da, dum—became the object of Beethoven’s enormously fruitful musical creativity. Or the motivführung that traverses several of Beethoven’s late string quartets, as described by Norbert Brainin, the late Amadeus Quartet primarius, at a Schiller Institute seminar, where he started with Op. 132.[fn_20]

Paradoxically the one, unifying musical idea must subsume many free, independent voices. Beethoven wrote the following upon being asked by a composer to criticize his composition:

[N]ot indirectly, but frankly, as is my wont, I only tell you that you might pay a little more attention to the separate conduct of the parts in future works of this kind.[fn_21]

Creativity is not linear. LaRouche emphasized the role of surprise, paradox, metaphor, irony, even jokes, and puns, all of which Beethoven was a master. The listener is consciously led into a trap, where, suddenly, the unexpected occurs. A dramatic new element takes you by surprise, and you are forced to make a mental leap into the realm of the imagination, away from linear thinking. Afterwards, an emotional release occurs, for example, when you “get the joke.” In metaphor, there is a juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated elements in a surprising way, which can only be understood from a higher, subsuming level. (See box: Beethoven Thought
in Metaphor)

In the process of unfolding the musical idea in a polyphonic (many-voiced) musical universe, sometimes the different individual voices come into conflict with each other, and dissonances emerge in the contrapuntal process, which urgently demand to be resolved, thus driving the unfolding process forward in a non-linear way.

This is similar to a human dialogue of cultures, where, sometimes, conflicts emerge. These conflicts, however, can be solved through the process of creating a higher unity, the which Nikolaus von Kues (Nicholas of Cusa) called the “coincidence of opposites.” This is actually a common metaphor in Danish known as things “going up in a higher unity” (at gå op i en højere enhed.) In music, the higher unity is the overall musical idea of that particular piece.

The creative process also entails great emotional tension in the midst of problem solving, as if you are hanging on a psychological cliff, or lost in no-man’s land. You begin to doubt if the problem can ever be solved. But the great thinker, whether in music, science, or elsewhere, develops a power of concentration, sometimes lasting years, based on an underlying consciousness of the importance of his or her endeavor, a striving passion, until a breakthrough occurs, as if in a flash of insight, and the problem is solved.

The creative struggle involves trying out new solutions, which are not in the rulebook, and not in your own past productions. To be self-reflective about the creative process requires not only being conscious about new methods of composition, as Beethoven sometimes explicitly wrote that he had invented, which Plato referred to as a “higher hypothesis,” but, also, to be self-conscious about the increasingly creative quality of compositional methods, which Plato called the “hypothesis of the higher hypothesis.”

From Beethoven to a publisher in 1802 regarding Piano Variations Op. 34 and 35:

Both sets are really worked out in a wholly new manner, and each in a separate and different way…. I myself can assure you that in both these works the method is quite new so far as I am concerned.[fn_22]

[W]hen feeling opens up a path for us, then away with all rules.[fn_23]

In fact, LaRouche wrote that Beethoven should be considered a physical scientist, because of his ability to make one creative breakthrough after another, to discover new worlds, new modes of musical expression. In science, we discover new physical principles of nature, even creating new states of matter, never before seen in nature. Opening your mind to the existence of a paradox, that which does not fit into the accepted theories, spurs the mind to seek new, higher, hypotheses, and design crucial physical experiments to prove, or disprove them.

In art, we use the same cognitive powers to discover new artistic principles, and, also, something new about our own creativity, which we can share with others, be they musicians or listeners. We can communicate the power of creativity, itself, to move men’s souls.

Beethoven was a master in making use of known musical forms (for example, the sonata form), and imbuing them with surprising, new, revolutionary content.

Beethoven’s Struggle to Approximate
Divine Creativity

Beethoven was self-conscious about his own divine spark of creativity, that which LaRouche devoted his life to better understand, that Götterfunken (godly spark), of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”: Freude, schöne Götterfunken[fn_24], the which Beethoven set to music in his monumental Ninth Symphony. LaRouche pondered, what does it mean for man to be in the image of The Creator? It is this capacity for man, also, to be a creator. That, stressed LaRouche, is what separates men and women from beasts. (See the section on the divine spark in every individual in LaRouche’s article in this issue, “In the Garden of Gethsemane,” written in his prison cell in 1990.)

Beethoven wrote to publisher Breitkopf & Härtel in 1812: “my heavenly art, the only true divine gift of Heaven,” and in 1824: “I am free from all small-minded vanity: only the divine art, in it alone is the main-spring which gives me strength to devote the best part of my life to the heavenly Muses.”[fn_25]

After seeing a collection of Schubert’s songs, Beethoven’s friend Anton Schindler records him as saying: “Truly, this Schubert is lit by a divine spark.”[fn_26]

Resenting publishers who line their pockets with profits from an author’s work, treating them as “tasty brain-food,” Beethoven wrote:

The author [Beethoven] is determined to show that the human brain cannot be sold either like coffee beans or like any form of cheese which, as everyone knows, must first be produced from milk, urine and so forth—The human brain is inherently inalienable.[fn_27]

Beethoven was very conscious of his mission in life: to be as creative as he could be, in order to uplift needy humanity with the power of his music. To adopt the immortal mission of the artist: to ennoble the present, and future generations. There was no standing still or entropy, but, instead, what LaRouche called anti-entropy. Motivated by his love for mankind, Beethoven willfully became more and more conscious of his own creative powers, and constantly strove to leap up to the next higher level of creativity, with the explicit goal of more closely reaching the power of God’s own creativity. (See box: Beethoven: ‘To Spread the Rays of the Godhead’)

The Sublime

Beethoven’s passion to fulfill his mission gave him the power to rise above personal adversity, in the form of his increasing deafness. As he put it in his moving Heiligenstadt testament, he was in anguish about losing that very sense which he ought to have in perfection.

Schiller calls this the sublime—our ability to rise above sensual pain, for the purpose of a higher mission.

In 1813, Beethoven wrote: “Lend sublimity to my highest thoughts, enrich them with truths that remain truths forever!”[fn_28]

He copied from another source: “Everything that is called life should be sacrificed to the sublime and be a sanctuary of art.”[fn_29]

Beethoven wrote to his good friend Dr. Franz Wegeler, in about 1801, about his anxiety during the previous two years because of his increasing deafness, and recent happy moments due to a woman he was now in love with, continuing:

For me there is no greater pleasure than that of practicing and displaying my art. My strength, both in body and mind, for some time has been on the increase. Every day brings me nearer to the goal which I feel but cannot describe. And it is only in that condition that your Beethoven can live. There must be no rest—I know of none but sleep…. I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly not wholly overcome me. Oh! life is so beautiful. Would that I could have a thousand lives![fn_30]

A year later, in the testament Beethoven wrote in Heiligenstadt addressed to his brothers, but never sent, he penned that he was so desperate, that he had considered taking his own life. But he could not morally allow himself to do so, because he knew that he had so much more music to give humanity:

But what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and I would have ended my life—it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me…. “Divine one, thou seest my inmost soul thou knowest that therein dwells the love of mankind and the desire to do good.” Ever since my childhood my heart and soul have been imbued with the tender feeling of goodwill; and I have always been inclined to accomplish great things.[fn_31]

This became Beethoven’s moral imperative—Beethoven, the musician, and Beethoven, the man.

On September 17, 1824 to publisher Schott, after writing that his health was poor:

Apollo and the Muses will not yet hand me over to the Scythe Man, for I still owe them much; and before my departure for the Elysian Fields I must finish what the spirit suggests to me [or, as another translation has it: what the Eternal Spirit has infused into my soul[fn_32]] and commands me to finish. It is to me as if I had only written a few notes.[fn_33]

In art, there is a seeming paradox. The artist’s thoughts are often light years ahead of the general population, yet the mission of the artist is to ennoble just those people through the aesthetical experience—to raise the sights of the people to the stars. Beethoven, especially, felt this paradox, but was determined to compose at the highest level he could, despite complaints that his works were either unplayable, or not understandable.

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Beethoven, sculpted by Hugo Hagen in 1898.

Beethoven for Us, Today

Though he could not hear music with his ears, Beethoven heard music in his mind and felt it in his soul. He would go on to produce what many consider the greatest music in human history. That is why people all over the world still perform and listen to his music. That is also why we must strive to present Beethoven’s music to those, emphatically including young people, who don’t know the beauty they are missing. Let us give it to them, as Beethoven’s present to everyone, on the occasion of his 250th birthday.

Dear reader, take the opportunity to celebrate Beethoven’s birthday by immersing yourself in listening to, and even playing and singing, his works, so that you may better understand the creative beings that we are. Notes on paper represent not just tones, but the keys to Beethoven’s creative mind. Thereby, you can confirm a positive image of man, which also had a political dimension for Beethoven—the pursuit of freedom.

Six months after leaving Bonn, Beethoven quoted from Friedrich Schiller’s play, Don Carlos in the commemorative leaf that he wrote for a woman: “Do well where one can, love freedom above all, never renounce the truth, not even before the royal throne.”[fn_34]

As Schiller said, the road to Freedom goes through Beauty. That was Schiller’s solution after the French Revolution, which did not end like the American Revolution, but in a bloodbath.[fn_35] It is not rage and anger that will transform our society for the better, but reasoned future-oriented policy proposals based on the most noble image of man.

Beethoven characterized humanity as “we mortals with immortal minds.” His creativity can speak directly to you from his place in the “simultaneity of eternity,” the place LaRouche often spoke of, outside of space and time, where the emanations of the most creative people in history are found.

From a letter to a painter: “Continue to paint and I shall continue to write down notes, and thus we shall live—forever?—yes, perhaps, forever.”[fn_36]

“I would rather set to music Homer, Klopstock, Schiller, although even these would cause difficulties, but these immortal poets are worth it.”[fn_37]

To fellow composer Luigi Cherubini: “True art is imperishable, and the true artist feels inward pleasure in the production of great works.”[fn_38]

We can drink from this fountain of creativity, and nourish ourselves, so that, hopefully, we may contribute, each in his or her own way, to enriching the flow.

And ye musicians: strive to master Beethoven’s compositional principles so that we may rediscover the almost lost art of composing beautiful and profound music, and, maybe, even, go beyond.

Let Beethoven aid us in developing our own creative powers so that we may generate nothing less than a new global renaissance, for the sake of needy humanity.

—mich.ras@hotmail.com

Read the author’s other articles on culture at https://rasmussenmichelle.academia.edu/.

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EIRNS/Sylvia Spaniolo

“The true artist feels inward pleasure in the production of great works.” —Beethoven. Here, the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus and orchestra in a concert on Schiller’s birthday, St. Bartholomew’s Church, New York, November 18, 2018. The Schiller Institute encourages members of the public to join the Chorus.

[fn_1]1. Lyndon LaRouche, Think Like Beethoven, paperback available here. [back to text for fn_1]

[fn_2]2. Dr. A.C. Kalischer, Beethoven’s Letters, With Explanatory Notes, Dover, 1972, page 160. [back to text for fn_2]

[fn_3]3. Michelle Rasmussen, “ ‘All Men Become Brothers’: The Decades-Long Struggle for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,” EIR Vol. 42, No. 26, June 26, 2015, pages 38-51. [back to text for fn_3]

[fn_4]4. Maynard Solomon, “Reason and Imagination: Beethoven’s Aesthetic Evolution,” in Historical Musicology: Sources, Methods, Interpretations, by Stephen A. Crist and Roberta Montemorra Marvin (editors), University of Rochester Press, 2008, page 189. [back to text for fn_4]

[fn_5]5. Kalischer, page 68. See note 2. [back to text for fn_5]

[fn_6]6. Kalischer, page 331. [back to text for fn_6]

[fn_7]7. From a more extensive footnote about Plato written by Edgar A. Poe in “The Colloquy of Monos and Una.” The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Modern Library, 1938, page 446. [back to text for fn_7]

[fn_8]8. Written in Lenz von Breuning’s album, Kalischer, page 11. [back to text for fn_8]

[fn_9]9. Speech delivered to the Schiller Institute conference, “Classical Culture, an Imperative for Mankind,” held in Rüsselsheim, Germany, July 3, 2011. EIR Vol. 38, No. 27, July 15, 2011, pages 30-38. [back to text for fn_9]

[fn_10]10. Azquotes.com/quote/864207 [back to text for fn_10]

[fn_11]11. Albert Einstein, Einstein On Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions & Aphorisms. goodreads.com/quotes/423568. [back to text for fn_11]

[fn_12]12. www.azquotes.com/quote/831606. [back to text for fn_12]

[fn_13]13. brainyquote.com /quotes/albert_einstein_121643. [back to text for fn_13]

[fn_14]14. Read the article, “Einstein the Artist,” by Shawna Halevy, one of LaRouche’s collaborators. EIR Vol. 39, No. 19, May 11, 2012, pages 58-66 [back to text for fn_14]

[fn_15]15. Solomon, “Reason and Imagination,” in Historical Musicology, page 194. See note 4. [back to text for fn_15]

[fn_16]16. Counterpoint is the art of writing two or more lines, or voices, of music designed to be in dialogue with each other, from “point against point,” writing a contrary note to a given note, or point. [back to text for fn_16]

[fn_17]17. Michael Hamburger (editor), Beethoven: Letters, Journals and Conversations, Thames & Hudson, 2007, page 199. [back to text for fn_17]

[fn_18]18. Maynard Solomon, Beethoven Essays, Harvard University Press, 1990, page 127. [back to text for fn_18]

[fn_19]19. Solomon, “Reason and Imagination,” in Historical Musicology, page 194. [back to text for fn_19]

[fn_20]20. Over September 20-22, 1995, the Schiller Institute sponsored a series of seminars featuring Lyndon LaRouche’s close friend and collaborator Norbert Brainin, at the Dolná Krupá castle in Slovakia. Watch Mr. Brainin demonstrate the principle of motivic through composition in Seminar No. 4 here, or read more about it here. [back to text for fn_20]

[fn_21]21. To Baron Carl August von Klein in 1826, Kalischer, page 365. [back to text for fn_21]

[fn_22]22. Solomon, “Reason and Imagination,” in Historical Musicology, page 191. [back to text for fn_22]

[fn_23]23. Op. cit., page 192. [back to text for fn_23]

[fn_24]24. A word coined before Schiller, by Johann Georg Adam Forster in writing about Benjamin Franklin. [back to text for fn_24]

[fn_25]25. Kalischer, page 330. [back to text for fn_25]

[fn_26]26. Manuel Komroff, Beethoven and the World of Music, Dodd, Mead, 1961, page 164. [back to text for fn_26]

[fn_27]27. Solomon, “Reason and Imagination,” in Historical Musicology, page 190. [back to text for fn_27]

[fn_28]28. Hamburger, Beethoven: Letters, page 122. See note 17. [back to text for fn_28]

[fn_29]29. Birgit Lodes, in William Kinderman (editor), The String Quartets of Beethoven, University of Illinois Press, 2020, page 186. [back to text for fn_29]

[fn_30]30. Kalischer, page 23. [back to text for fn_30]

[fn_31]31. Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, Vol. I, revised and edited by Elliot Forbes, Princeton University Press, 1991, page 305. [back to text for fn_31]

[fn_32]32. Maynard Solomon, Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination, University of California Press, 2004, page 93. [back to text for fn_32]

[fn_33]33. Kalischer, page 332. [back to text for fn_33]

[fn_34]34. To Theodora Johanna Vocke in Nuremberg, May 22, 1793. Joseph Schmidt-Görg, ”A Schiller Quote from Beethoven in a New Perspective,” in Günter Henle, Music, Edition, Interpretation, 1980, page 423. [back to text for fn_34]

[fn_35]35. Beethoven actually expressed his desire to travel to North America. “If only God will restore me to my health, which to say the least, has improved, I could do myself justice, in accepting offers from all cities in Europe, yes, even North America, and might still prosper.” Beethoven received a request for an oratorio from Boston’s Musical Society, which, in the end, he did not write. Kalischer, page 289. [back to text for fn_35]

[fn_36]36. Solomon, Late Beethoven, page 98. See note 32. [back to text for fn_36]

[fn_37]37. Kalischer, page 321. [back to text for fn_37]

[fn_38]38. Kalischer, page 296. [back to text for fn_38]

Beethoven Thought in Metaphor

Even when he was not composing, Beethoven thought in metaphor. In response to a letter from his brother which was proudly signed “landowner,” Beethoven signed his letter, “brain-owner.”^a[fn_1]

From a remembrance by music critic and literary figure, Johann Friedrich Rochlitz: “Once he is in the vein, rough, striking witticisms, droll conceits, surprising and exciting paradoxes suggest themselves to him in a continuous flow.”^b[fn_2][fn_3]

From his student Karl Czerny: “He could introduce a play on words anywhere.”^c For example, “As regards Frau v. Stein [stone in English], I beg her not to let Herr v. Steiner be petrified, so that he may still be able to serve me.”^d[fn_4]

Or he could make up funny words, calling a fugue “tone-flight-work.”^e[fn_5]

Here is an example of the great fun Beethoven had when writing to Tobias Hasslinger, publisher Sigmund Anton Steiner’s assistant, who later became the publisher (Beethoven usually called Hasslinger the “little adjutant,” Beethoven being “Generalissimus”):

I dreamed that I was taking a far journey, as far as Syria, as far as India, back again as far as Arabia; finally I came indeed to Jerusalem. The Holy City prompted thoughts about the Holy Writ [Bible], when, and no wonder, I thought of the man Tobias [from the Bible], and naturally that led to my thinking of our little Tobias and our pertobias[sen] [making the name a verb, then a noun meaning to turn the name ‘Tobias’ into music^f[fn_6]]; now, in my dream journey, the following canon occurred to me:^g[fn_7]

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Beethoven then forgot the canon*[fn_8], and when he remembered it again, it had turned into a three-voice canon, which he held as strongly as Menelaus had held Proteus.

His letter to Tobias Hasslinger continues:

Soon I shall send in something about Steiner, too, just to prove that he hasn’t a heart of stone. Farewell, very dearest of friends, we wish you continually that you may never be true to the name of publisher and may never be publicly humiliated…. [The pun on Verleger (publisher) and verlegen (embarrassed, at a loss) was one of which Beethoven was especially fond.]^h[fn_9]

Enclosed in a letter to a publisher in 1825 with some canons, Beethoven includes:

[A] supplement, a romantic description of the life of Tobias Hasslinger in 3 parts. First part: Tobias is an assistant of the celebrated authority, Capellmeister Fux—and holds the ladder to his Gradus ad Parnassum [steps to Parnassus, the mountain where the Muses live, the name of Fux’s pedantic book on counterpoint]. As he is now inclined to practical joking, through shaking and pushing the ladder he causes many of those who had got fairly high up to fall headlong and break their necks, &c. He now bids farewell to our clod of earth and reappears at the time of Albrechtsberger [a leading counterpoint teacher who gave Beethoven some lessons].

2nd part. The already existing Fuxian nota cambiata [changed note] is now treated in conjunction with A[lbrechtsberger]. and the changing notes thoroughly expounded; the art of creating a musical skeleton is carried on to the highest degree, &c. Tobias, now a caterpillar, is turned into a grub [butterfly larva], is developed, and appears for the third time on this earth.

3rd part. The scarcely formed wings now hasten to the Paternostergässl [the address of the publisher]; he becomes Paternostergässler Capellmeister, and having gone through the school of the changing notes [Wechselnoten] he retains nothing of them but the change [Wechsel], and so gains the friend of his youth, and finally becomes a member of several inland empty-headed societies, &c. If you ask him, he will certainly allow this account of his life to be published.ⁱ[fn_10]

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[fn_1]a. Russell Sherman, Piano Pieces, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 30, 1997, page 114. [back to text for fn_1]

[fn_2]b. Oscar Sonneck (editor), Beethoven: Impressions by His Contemporaries, Dover Books, 1967, page 128. [back to text for fn_2]

[fn_3]c. Solomon, “Reason and Imagination,” in Historical Musicology, page 223. [back to text for fn_3]

[fn_4]d. Kalischer, page 229. [back to text for fn_4]

[fn_5]e. Kalischer, page 356. [back to text for fn_5]

[fn_6]f. The Free Dictionary Language Forums, by Farlex, “Beethoven’s writing: question.” [back to text for fn_6]

[fn_7]g. Kalischer, page 281. [back to text for fn_7]

[fn_8]* https://beethoven.ru/node/909 [WoO 182: O Tobias!, трехголосный канон Бетховен (beethoven.ru)] [back to text for fn_8]

[fn_9]h. The Unheard Beethoven website, “Canon, O Tobias, WoO 182.” [back to text for fn_9]

[fn_10]i. Kalischer, page 229. [back to text for fn_10]

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Beethoven: ‘To Spread the Rays of the Godhead’

In a letter to Archduke Rudolph, Beethoven wrote:

There is nothing higher than to approach the Godhead more nearly than other mortals and by means of that contact to spread the rays of the Godhead through the human race.^j[fn_1]

To Emilie, a girl of 8 to 10 years old, who had written to him in 1812:

Persevere, do not only practice your art, but endeavor also to fathom its inner meaning; it deserves this effort. For only art and science can raise men to the level of gods…. The true artist has no pride. He sees unfortunately that art has no limits; he has a vague awareness of how far he is from reaching his goal; and while others may perhaps be admiring him, he laments the fact that he has not yet reached the point whither his better genius only lights the way for him like a distant sun.

I should probably prefer to visit you and your family than to visit many a rich person who betrays a poverty of mind. If I should ever go to H., then I will call on you and your family. I know of no other human excellences than those which entitle one to be numbered among one’s better fellow creatures. Where I find people of that type, there is my home.^k[fn_2]

In the 1790s, he wrote about the need “to strive towards the inaccessible goal which art and nature have set us.”^l[fn_3]

When asked which of the string quartets opera 127, 130, 132 was the greatest: “Each in its way. Art demands of us that we shall not stand still…. You will find a new manner of part writing and thank God there is less lack of fancy than ever before.”^m[fn_4]

For the artist “there is no more undisturbed, more unalloyed or purer pleasure” than that which comes from rising “ever higher into the heaven of art.”ⁿ[fn_5]

Freedom and progress are the aims throughout creation:

[T]he older composers render us double service, since there is generally real artistic value in their works (among them only the German Handel and Seb. Bach possessed genius). But in the world of art, and in the whole of our great creation, freedom and progress are the main objectives. And although we moderns are not quite as far advanced in solidity as our ancestors, yet the refinement of our customs has enlarged many of our conceptions as well.^o[fn_6]

Dr. Kalischer comments^p[fn_7] on a letter of Beethoven to a court lawyer, Dr. Johann Baptist Bach: “We may recall the fact that the composer thought of writing an Overture on the name [B-A-C-H: B-flat, A, C, B-natural in German letter notation]; there are many sketches, the following is among some for the Tenth Symphony:

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In a letter to the new directors of the Royal Imperial Court Theatre in Vienna, Beethoven wrote: “[T]he undersigned has always striven less for a livelihood than for the interests of art, the ennoblement of taste and the uplifting of his genius towards higher ideals and perfection.”^q[fn_8]     [back to text]

[fn_1]j. Solomon, “Reason and Imagination,” in Historical Musicology, page189. [back to text for fn_1]

[fn_2]k. Emily Anderson (editor), Letter No. 376, in The Letters of Beethoven, Vol. 1, W.W. Norton, 1986, pages 380-381. [back to text for fn_2]

[fn_3]l. Solomon, “Reason and Imagination,” in Historical Musicology, page 191. [back to text for fn_3]

[fn_4]m. Ibid., page 192. [back to text for fn_4]

[fn_5]n. Ibid., page 192. [back to text for fn_5]

[fn_6]o. Ibid., page 192. Words in parentheses from Kalischer, page 270. [back to text for fn_6]

[fn_7]p. Kalischer, page 326. [back to text for fn_7]

[fn_8]q. Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, revised and edited by Elliot Forbes, Vol. I, Princeton University Press, 1991, page 426. [back to text for fn_8]

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This article appears in the March 5, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

January 17, 1990

In the Garden of Gethsemane

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

[Print version of this article]

Editor’s Note: This essay was first published in EIR Vol. 44, No. 37, September 15, 2017, pages 19-21.

A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.

—Matthew 13:57

Those of us who find ourselves in Gethsemane—a Gethsemane where we are told that we must take a role of leadership with our eye on Christ on the Cross—often experience something which, unfortunately, most people do not. We tend to look at things from a different standpoint. Before trying to situate how I see the recent period, and the period immediately before us, I should try to communicate what my viewpoint is, a viewpoint which I know is shared in some degree of very close approximation by everyone who has gone to Gethsemane with the view of the Cross in his eyes, saying, “He did it, I am now being told that I must, too, walk in His way.”

What I suggest often, in trying to explain this to a person who has not experienced it, is to say: “Imagine a time 50 years after you’re dead. Imagine in that moment, 50 years ahead, that you can become conscious and look back at the entirety of your mortal life, from its beginning to its ending. And, rather than seeing that mortal life as a succession of experiences, you see it as a unity. Imagine facing the question respecting that mortal life, asking, “Was that life necessary in the total scheme of the universe and the existence of mankind, was it necessary that I be born in order to lead that life, the sum total of that number of years between birth and death? Did I do something, or did my living represent something, which was positively beneficial to present generations, and implicitly to future generations after me? If so, then I should have walked through that life with joy, knowing that every moment was precious to all mankind, because what I was doing by living was something that was needed by all mankind, something beneficial to all mankind.”

If I am wise, then 50 years after my death, in looking back at my mortal life, I know that from the beginning with my birth, to the end with my death, that my truest self-interest was the preservation and enhancement of that which made my having lived important to those around me and those who came after me.

That is the beginning, I think, of true wisdom; that is the beginning of the Passion, which sometimes enables each of us when called, to walk through our own peculiar kind of Gethsemane. It is from this standpoint, that the mind of an individual such as our own, can efficiently comprehend history in the large.

A second point, which I often raise, I think is essential to understand the few simple observations I have to make here. It is that, in human reason, in the power, for example, to effect a valid, fundamental scientific discovery, which overturns, in large degree, previous scientific opinion, we see a fundamental distinction between man and all beasts. This power of creative reason, typified by the power to make a valid, fundamental scientific discovery, and also the power to transmit and to receive such a discovery, is that which sets man apart from and above the beasts.

The emotion associated with that kind of human activity, whether in physical science, in the development of creative works or performance of creative works of classical culture or simply in the caring for a child to nurture that quality of potential for discovery in the child, is true love. Creative activity is human activity, and the emotion associated with that kind of activity, is true love.

We start from that and say that society must be based on these considerations, that. every human being, being apart from and above the animals, has the right and the obligation to live an important life. Every human being has the right to do something, such that if one looked back 50 years after the death of that person at his or her whole mortal life, one could have said, that life was necessary to all humanity. At the same time, one could distinguish some use of this creative power of reasoning as the activity which made that life important, simply, sometimes, the development of that creative power.

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Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Two Conflicting Views of Mankind

We have, in the entirety of the approximately 2,500 years of Western European history, which includes the history of the Americas, two conflicting views of mankind. One view shares more or less the standpoint I’ve just identified: We view the human individual as bearing the divine spark of potential for reason, as a sacred life; a spark of reason which must be developed by society, nurtured by society, given opportunity for fruitful expression by society; a quality of activity whose good works must be adopted by society, protected by society, and preserved by society, for the benefit of present and future generations. That is the republic, the republic as conceived by Solon’s constitution of Athens—a notion of republic, which, in our time, is made nobler by the Christian understanding, which transforms and elevates the contributions of Solon and Socrates after him.

On the other side, there is the conception of Sparta, a privileged oligarchy, brutalizing the helots, the slaves, the so-called lower classes. That, too, is a model society, not a republic, but an oligarchy.

The struggle between these two views of mankind is epitomized by the struggle between President and General George Washington, on the one side, and King George III on the other. George Washington was a soldier and statesman of the republic, not a perfect one, but a good one. On the opposite side was poor King George III, the puppet of the evil Earl of Shelbourne, and the epitome of oligarchism, the heritage of Sparta. The tradition of King George III, which deems that some men must be kept slaves, is an oligarchical view, which hates the idea of the equality of the individual in respect to the individual human being’s possession of that divine spark, the individual human being’s right to the development of that spark, the nurture of its activity, and the defense and perpetuation of its good works.

Such is the conflict. In our time, the great American Republic, by virtue of the cultivation of ignorance and concern with smallness of mind, and neglect of the importance of what comes after us in the living of our mortal lives, has been so undermined, degraded, and corrupted, that we as a nation no longer are the nation we were conceived to be, but instead have become a nation brain-drained in front of our television sets, thinking with greater passion about mere spectator sports or mere television soap-opera than we do about urgent events in real life. We are a nation seeking gratification in drugs, in sordid forms of sexual activity, in other sordid entertainments, in that kind of pleasure-seeking, which echoes the words Sodom and Gomorrah.

And so, oligarchism, that which George III of England represented back in the eighteenth century, has taken over and rules the land which was once George Washington’s.

What this leads to is this. Today, there is a great revolution around the world against tyranny in all forms. So far, this revolution has manifested itself within the communist sector against communist tyrannies. But it is coming here, too. Wherever the divine spark of reason is being crushed by oligarchical regimes, with all their cruelties, the divine spark of reason within human beings inspires them to arise, to throw off the tyranny—not out of anger and rage against tyranny, but because the divine spark of reason in each person must be affirmed. We seek not merely to be free from oligarchy; we seek to be free from oligarchy, because not to do so would be to betray the divine spark of reason in ourselves and in others.

Agapē

The secret of great revolutions, of great civil rights movements, as Dr. King’s example illustrates, is this capacity, which the Greek New Testament called agapē, which Latin called caritas, which the King James version of the Bible calls charity, which we otherwise know as love. Whenever this power of love, this recognition of that divine spark, setting us above the beasts, prevails, wherever people can approximate that view of the sum total of their lives, as if from 50 years after their deaths, whenever movements arise which, out of love, produce people who are willing, not fruitlessly, but for a purpose, to lay down their lives, so that their lives might have greater meaning, for this purpose—there you have the great revolutions of history.

If we were to project events on the basis of what is taught in the schools about revolutions and other struggles of the past, then the human race at present were doomed. If we say that people struggle against this and that oppression, and so forth, and out of rage or whatnot, overthrow their cruel oppressor, we should lose; the human race would lose. However, if we touch the force of love, the spark of divine reason, we unleash a force, a creative force, a divine force, which is greater than any adversary, and we win. Those revolutions, which are based upon the appeal to this divine spark of reason within the individual, prevailed. Those which worked otherwise produced abominations, or simply failed.

Yes, we must struggle against injustice. But it is not enough to struggle out of anger. We must struggle out of love. And that we learn best, who have had to walk as leaders of one degree or another, through our own Gethsemane, with the image of the Cross before us.

That is the best I can say. I might say it better, but what I try to say with these poor words, is the best I can say summarily, on the subject of current history. I believe, that the great upsurge of humanity, implicit in the optimism I express, is now in progress. I am persuaded that we shall win, provided that each of us can find in ourselves that which makes us the right arm of the Creator, a man, a woman of providence, within the limits of our own capacities and opportunities.

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Dictated from prison

Rochester, Minnesota

January 17, 1990

Videoarkivet bliver klart om 2 dage. Klik her på FFRCC’s hjemmeside.

Vi inviterer dig til at nyde en 24-timers international fejring af Ludwig van Beethoven, fra den 16.-17. december 2020, datoen for hans 250 års fødselsdag. Fejringen blev præsenteret af Schiller Instituttets Venner, The Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture (Fond for genoplivning af klassisk kultur). Deltag! De delte hilsner fra hele verden; videohyldest af forskellige typer; og for det meste hans herlige musik, der fejrer hans sind, kunstneriske vision og mission. Det var levende arrangeret med særlige gæster, kommentarer og sjældne optagelser af Beethovens værker.

”Jeg vil tage skæbnen i kraven; den vil aldrig bøje mig helt efter dens vilje.”
– Ludwig van Beethoven

Afskrift af en tale Michelle Rasmussen, næstformand for Schiller Instituttet i Danmark, holdt ved Schiller Instituttet i Danmarks videokonference: Verden efter valget i USA, den 8. december 2020

Se hele konferencen her.

Vi har en civilisationskrise: en konfrontationspolitik, som kan føre til krig med Rusland og Kina, en COVID-19-pandemi, økonomiske og finansielle kriser og en voksende sultkatastofe i Afrika.
Vil vi etablere en ny retfærdig økonomisk verdensorden eller vil det ende i kaos og krig?

Det er en kamp mellem helt forskellige menneskesyn.
LaRouche understregede altid: hvad er forskellen mellem mennesker og dyr?
Er vi dyriske?
Eller har vi en iboende kreativ erkendelsesevne, som gør os i stand til at opdage nye principper — noget nyt, som ingen andre har tænkt på.
I videnskab opdager vi nye naturvidenskabelige principper.
I kunst opdager vi nyt om vores egne kreative evner, som kan deles med andre, som i et orkester eller kor eller med tilhørerene.

Skønhed, som Schiller sagde, forædle vores følelser og vores intellekt —
ikke kun rå følelser som dominerer os uden intellekt,
ikke kun intellekt uden medfølelse og næstekærlighed.

Men gennem at lege, speciel gennem kunst, at spille, kan de to går op i en højere enhed, som vi kalder en æstetisk tilstand, når vi er omfavnet af skønhed.

Det var Schillers løsning efter den franske revolution, som ikke endte som den amerikanske, men i et blodbad.

Platon skrev, at den vigtigste uddannelse for sjælen var musik — at fylde sjælen med skønhed og gøre den skøn.
Mennesket ville så lovprise skønhed, modtage den med glæde i sin sjæl, og blive til en skøn sjæl.

Den 16. december fejrer vi Beethoven 250-års fødselsdag.
Vi fejrer ham, som en af de mest kreative sjæle i historien, men vi fejrer også menneskehedens erkendelsesmæssige evner.

Studér Beethoven for bedre at forstå, hvad vi mennesker er.
Beethoven, selv da han ikke var i stand til at høre sin egne musik, hørte den alligevel i sit sind, og udfordrede sig selv til at lave det ene gennembrud efter det anden.

Der var ingen stilstand eller entropi, men hvad LaRouche kalder ikke-entropi.

At viljemæssigt blive mere og mere bevist om, at kende sine egne erkendelsesmæssige evner, og presse dem til det yderste for at kunne stige op til det næste niveau, og som han skrev, at nærme sig Guds egen skaberkraft.

Og han havde et formål: at opløfte den trængende menneskehed.
Han var bevidst om musikkens rolle med at forædle menneskene.

Gennem at spille, synge eller lytte, kan Beethovens kreativitet deles med andre —
noderne på papiret, er ikke kun toner, men nøglen til Beethovens kreative sind.

Og dermed kan andre mennesker bekræfte et positivt menneskesyn, som også havde en politisk dimension for Beethoven — stræben efter frihed.
Som Schiller sagde, vejen til frihed går gennem skønhed.

For at fejre Beethoven så lyt til eller syng og spil hans værker. Genoplev hans åndelige gennembrud, bekræft den menneskelig kreativitet, skab et samfund, hvor vi kan genopdage den tabte kunst at skabe skøn musik,
måske endnu mere kreativ end Beethoven, og udvikle vores erkendelsesmæssige evner, for hele menneskehedens skyld.

Så blev der spillet den første del af 2. sats af Beethovens 7. symfoni, dirigeret af Wilhelm Furtwängler, som eksempel.
Ud fra en enkel begyndelse tilføjes flere og flere stemmer for at skabe noget stort og opløftende.

Se også Deadlines indslag om Beethoven 250 år den 7. december 2020 14,

Klik her og så 14:46 minuter inde i programmet

Den 16. december 2020 markerer Ludwig van Beethovens 250-års fødselsdag. Som en del af de internationale festligheder i år og næste år til ære for Beethoven, er Schiller Instituttet glad for at indvie en ny serie på vores internationale hjemmeside (www.schillerinstitute.com) . Vi vil regelmæssigt sende videoer af Beethovens musik med korte diskussioner af stykkerne.

Friedrich Schillers smukke ord fra hans digt “Ode til Glæden” bliver storslået udødeliggjort i den sidste sats af Beethovens 9. symfoni:

Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, den Heiligtum.
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Seid umschlungen Millionen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
Brüder – überm Sternenzelt
Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen.

Til Glæden (dansk oversættelse):

Glæde, skønne gudegnist,
Datter af Elysium,
Vi betræder, berusede af ild,
Himmelske, din helligdom!
Din trolddom genforener,
Hvad vanen strengt har delt;
Alle mennesker bliver brødre,
Hvor din blide vinge dvæler.

Vær omfavnet, millioner,
Dette kys til hele verden! Brødre!
Over stjerneteltet
Må en kærlig fader bo.

Oversat af Werner Knudsen, akademisk.kor.dk

Schillers ord og Beethovens musik taler endnu mere lidenskabeligt og kraftfuldt til os i dag i disse tider med pandemiske sygdomme, hungersnød, økonomisk krise, social uro og trussel om krig. Lad os tage Schiller og Beethoven til vore hjerter og sind og skabe et nyt paradigme for fred og udvikling for hele menneskeheden.

Lyt, og lad Beethoven instruere os!

Læs og lyt til de daglige Beethoven indlæg her.

1. Jacques Cheminade (Frankrig), leder af Solidarite & Progres, tidligere præsidentkandidat

2. Marcia Merry Baker (USA), EIR-redaktionen

3. Bob Baker og amerikanske landbrugsledere:

Ron Wieczorek, South Dakota cattle rancher, LaRouchePAC
Nicole Pfrang, Kansas Cattlemen’s Association Secretary-Treasurer, cattle rancher
Mike Callicrate, Colorado, cattle rancher, Owner, Ranch Foods Direct:
4. Paul Gallagher (U.S.), EIR Editorial Board

5. Fred Haight (Canada), Schiller Instituttet

6. Michael Billington (US), chef for asiatiske anliggender, Executive Intelligence Review

7. Spørgsmål og svar

8. Beethoven-messe i C-dur, opførelse af Schiller Instituttets kor i New york
City.

Den følgende resolution bliver cirkuleret internationalt af Schiller Instituttet.

På et tidspunkt hvor vi er vidner til voksende og tankeløs vold, de kulturelle værdiers forfald, en næsten uhørt fordummelse af den folkelige smag, og brutaliseringen af menneskelige relationer, har vi ikke desto mindre én afgørende kilde, hvorfra en kulturel og moralsk genoprejsning kan skabes:
klassisk kunst! Det storslåede menneskesyn der er forbundet med de poetiske værker af Dante, Petrarca, Lessing eller Schiller, eller de ophøjede kompositioner af Bach, Mozart, Verdi, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann eller Brahms er stadig et referencepunkt for den måde, hvorpå vi definerer os selv som et samfund.

Men når vi betragter kunstnerens rolle i den nutidige kultur, og anvender Schillers målestok:

Der Menschheit Würde ist in eure Hand gegeben,
Bewahret sie!
Sie sinkt mit euch! Mit euch wird sie sich heben!

Menneskets værdighed ligger i jeres hænder,
Bevar den!
Den synker med jer! Med jer, skal den hæve sig!

kommer et fornedrende billede til syne. Vores uddannelsessystem formidler næppe nogen som helst viden om klassisk kultur, vores såkaldte ungdomskultur er domineret af en grimhedskult, og selve den klassiske kultur er under massivt angreb. I årtier har efterkrigstidens teaterforeninger opfundet nye afgrundsdybe vederstyggeligheder, fremførelser af Shakespeare eller Schiller er blevet uigenkendelige, operascenen er i nogen tid blevet en slagmark, hvor diverse instruktørers perverse fantasier kan udspilles, og nu forulemper selvbestaltede moderne komponister sågar Beethovens kompositioner, tydeligvis fordi de selv er ude af stand til at skabe noget som helst.

Dette må stoppes! Tiden er inde til at iværksætte en kontraoffensiv!

Beethoven-året, hvori mange af Beethovens kompositioner vil blive fremført verden over, giver os en vidunderlige lejlighed til at mindes den vestlige kulturs bedste kulturelle tradition, og at sætte den op imod den nedadgående moralske tendens i de sidste årtier. Vi kan ikke længere overlade roret til en teater- og musikmafia, der har ødelagt klassisk kunst. Derfor kræver vi skabelsen af en renæssancebevægelse til forsvar for og genoplivning af klassisk kunst. Som Friedrich Schiller uigendriveligt beviste dette i sine æstetiske breve: Kun igennem stor kunst kan vi finde den indre kraft til at udvikle vores egen kreativitet og forbedre os selv som mennesker.

Verden befinder sig for øjeblikket midt i epokegørende forandringer, hvor igennem den tidligere æra, domineret af transatlantiske lande, er ved at få en ende, og udviklingscentret er i gang med at skifte til Asien, hvor adskillige befolkninger med rette er stolte af deres, i nogle tilfælde, 5000 år gamle civilisationer og støtter disse. Hvis Vesten har noget som helst at bidrage til udformningen af det spirende nye paradigme, i en humanistisk ånd, så er det vores fremskredne kultur forbundet med Renæssancen og den klassiske periode.

Jeg støtter denne resolution! Underskriv gerne her.

Lad os begynde med Beethovens Niende Symfoni, der slutter med en overraskelse – menneskelige stemmer, der stemmer i med idéerne i Friedrich Schillers digt, Ode til glæden, indflettet i orkesterstemmerne, som dermed skaber et af historiens mest bevægende kunstværker. Lad os dernæst, ved at gå baglæns i tiden, gå igennem Beethovens tredive år lange søgen for at opnå dette og standse ved nogle af de musikalske milepæle, der førte til dette udødelige mesterværk i bevidstheden om den kendsgerning, at vi kun kan lytte til disse forløbere med deres efterfølgeres toner klingende i vore ører.

Rapporten er oversat fra engelsk. Den originale engelske rapport kan læses her. 

Download (PDF, Unknown)

Schiller Instituttets grundlægger, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, talte om hvor meget det haster med at genopdage Ludwig van Beethovens genialitet i år, 250-årsdagen for hans fødsel, for at løse de store kriser verden står overfor. Som hun udtrykte det i en nylig artikel: “Hvor ellers, bortset fra i klassisk musik, kan man styrke og uddybe den passion, der er nødvendig for at se ud over ens egne bekymringer, og for at håndtere de store udfordringer for menneskeheden?” Læs Zepp-LaRouches artikel, der gennemhuller argumenterne fra dem der i øjeblikket handler for at ødelægge Beethoven og selve skønheden.

Her er et afskrift på engelsk af videoen:

DENNIS SPEED: My name is Dennis Speed. We have a very special presentation for today. There will be much time to discuss all sorts of matters of political importance, but certainly after this past week, one thing that can be said for certain about the United States and the rest of the world as well, is that a new standard of truth is required of us and of humanity as a whole. Humanity needs to act without the false need of catastrophe. Many times in history, people have been set in motion by something bad, only to then do something good. We’ve seen that often to be the motivation for the necessity for war. We don’t believe that that’s a standard that humanity can afford. We think that humanity should try, for a change, to think like Beethoven. That was a theme of much of the life of Lyndon LaRouche, who is generally talked about as an economist and statesman and Presidential candidate and so forth. But most people are unaware of his work in music.

Recently a volume has been published, entitled Think Like Beethoven, which has a compilation of Mr. LaRouche’s writings. I want to refer to something that he said as a way of introducing our speaker. This is in the essay called “What Is Music, Really?” This was actually a conversation that was transcribed in which the subtitle here is “The Principle of Music Is Love”:

“The essential thing is love. Music is love. The principle of music is love, mankind’s love of mankind. Of what mankind could be. And you want to do something that’s beautiful in terms of what mankind’s nature says. And if it isn’t beautiful, you don’t want to do it. You don’t want ugly things! And the characteristic of the 20th century was ugly music. From the beginning it’s ugly music. And the music has become uglier and uglier and uglier all the time. On every street, even in speaking. In writing. Also in smelling….

“That’s the problem. Mankind tends toward the wrong standards of truth. It starts with the conception that mankind is an animal, and mankind is not an animal. When you start with saying that mankind is an animal, that’s when all the trouble comes in. And the only way you can deal with music, really, is on the basis of love. The love of mankind and what mankind can do that is loving of mankind.

“Because the future is: You’re all going to die. And what is the passion which corresponds, therefore, to mankind? Since everybody is going to die, what’s the meaning of human life? Is it a fact? Not exactly. It’s the creation of a more powerful capability of mankind by purging mankind of its own corruption. Extracting mankind into the freedom from corruption. And all practical measures to craft and improve the quality of art is crap, because they are not sincere. They don’t correspond to some principle of the matter.

“And this is true: You see it in drama; you see it on the musical stage; you see it in performance of all kinds. The beauty is creativity, per se. It’s also the measure of what creativity is.”

So today we’re going to hear from the founder and chairman of the Schiller Institute, and I think that à proposition is going to be placed in front of us all. And I want to dare to anticipate that proposition by saying the following: The only way to celebrate the Beethoven year, this being the 250th birthday of Beethoven, is to do something that Beethoven would do. And we have an indication of what he would do today, from his opera called “Fidelio.” I think you’re going to be hearing a bit of this. Exonerating Lyndon LaRouche would be the kind of action that would indicate that we had actually understood how Beethoven thought. We would be doing what Beethoven would have done; thus indicating that we understood how Beethoven thought. The idea of the liberation of the human mind from its own shackles, is something that was addressed briefly by the President of the United States at Davos, when he referenced the idea of optimism and the great Dome of Florence. An idea which took 140 years to complete.

But it doesn’t take 140 years to recognize the truth. And it shouldn’t take more than a few months to exonerate Lyndon LaRouche. So, though I know that the topics may range widely in the case of the next speaker from I exactly indicated, I’m going to anticipate that she’s certainly going to more than touch on that matter. So, it’s always my honor and pleasure to present Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chairwoman of the Schiller Institute, and the founder of the Schiller Institute.

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Let me welcome you, and I will try to talk about the subject which Dennis just announced. But let me situate it in a specific context. We just in the last couple of days had quite tumultuous events, where the impeachment drive against President Trump was finally defeated. He was acquitted, and he gave a rather jubilant press conference or meeting afterwards. So it is actually a moment in which one should reflect on that coup attempt, which first was done with British intelligence, the intelligence community of the United States, the heads of intelligence of the Obama administration. If one would live in a different world, one would think, “Shouldn’t it be the case that the Left opposes the CIA? Opposes the intelligence community? Shouldn’t it be that the liberals somehow have a problem if there is a coup attempt against a sitting, elected President of the United States?”

Well, but we all found out that no such thing occurs. Neither the so-called Left — if it still exists — or the Left liberals had any problem with the fact that there was overwhelming evidence that the intelligence apparatus tried to make a coup by replacing the American Constitution, turning the American republic into a British parliamentarian system; which was emphasized by Dershowitz and others. So, why is that the case?

What my presentation, which is on Beethoven and the question of culture in general, I will investigate why this is. And you will be surprised, some of you naturally know the answer already, that this behavior of the Left and the left liberals in this entire process, is the result of a gigantic — and I really mean gigantic — brainwashing effort which people are not even aware anymore of why this is the case.

What has this to do with the Beethoven year? We have a full year now of many concerts around the world. Alone in Germany there are more than 1000 concerts performing Beethoven’s music. When the first performances occurred, I had the fortune of listening one entire day in an Austrian/Swiss/German TV program to different Beethoven compositions. That is a luxury which you normally don’t have, but if you do that, and you listen for an entire day to all the different pieces — the piano concertos, the symphonies, the Missa Solemnis, Fidelio, and many others — it has an incredible effect on you. Because you are being transformed with your mind and your emotions in a completely different universe.

So, it occurred to me that this Beethoven year was a perfect opportunity, because it coincides with extremely important political and strategic decisions which have to take place. Namely, that we overcome geopolitics; that we go away from the danger of the world plunging into another World War, sleepwalking like in the First World War. That you have the absolute necessity to do what Trump set out to do in the 2016 campaign: Improve the relationship with Russia, with China. We have incredible dangers. So, it occurred to me that we should use the Beethoven year internationally to basically have many people participating in the listening of Beethoven, in the performing of Beethoven; in order to develop this unbelievable emotional strength which comes from great Classical music. And which comes more from Beethoven than from anybody else. Because it has been clear to me since a very long time, that we will politically only succeed if we combine our political efforts with a cultural renaissance of Classical music.

Now Schiller, in his Aesthetical Letters, which was his reaction to the failure and collapse of the French Revolution when the Jacobin Terror had taken over, and therefore the hopes of all republican circles in Europe that the French Revolution could replicate the American Revolution, were shattered. When that hope was shattered, and Schiller said at that time said, “A great moment had found a little people,” because the objective conditions to have a change, to have an American-like Revolution were there. But that the subject of moral condition was lacking.

So Schiller then, in his Aesthetical Letters, said that he believed that any improvement in politics could only come from the moral improvement, the ennoblement of the individual. And I believe that is absolutely true. I have made that my own creed for the last half century. That only if individuals become better human beings, that they become more noble in their emotion, their thinking more great about humanity; only then can you move history forward. Schiller, in his Aesthetical Education Letters gave the answer, that it can only be through great Classical art that that can be accomplished. Now, some people would argue, “No, what do we need Classical art for? We also have religion.” And I’m not denying that also in religion there is the command to improve. There are other people arguing, “But why do you need Classical music? I don’t know it; I don’t like it; it’s alien to me. Why don’t we just concentrate on astronomy, looking at the stars? That is also having an ennobling effect.” So, I’m not denying that either; and I don’t think there is an exclusiveness between these three questions of Classical culture, religion, and astronomy. But it is great Classical art which does something very specific in order to favor the creative faculties of the mind.

Now Schiller, and also Lyn his entire life, proceeded from that assumption. As a matter of fact, all of Schiller’s works — his poems, his dramas — were all characterized and driven by the idea that the result must be the ennoblement of the human being. And the quote you just heard from Dennis by Lyn really expresses the essence of Lyn’s entire work as well. Schiller, Confucius, and some other great thinkers had this idea that the aesthetical education is doing that ennoblement. Because if the person sinks into a great painting of Leonardo da Vinci, or Rembrandt, or listens to a Schubert song, or listens to a beautifully performed American spiritual, then you forget about your greed, you forget about your selfishness. And while thinking in the creative composition you are engaging with, you become a little bit more like that yourself. The more you make that a habit, and the less you do selfish and greedy things in between, the more you become a better person.

Just in parentheses, I want to mention that Xi Jinping, the President of China, also has many times emphasized the need to have aesthetical education, especially of students, but also of all other age brackets of society. Because if people are educated aesthetically, they develop a more beautiful mind and a more beautiful soul. And that is the source of all great works then again.

Now Trump said something just recently, namely that he wants to write an Executive Order that Federal buildings should no longer be modernist, but should be Classical. Hopefully he means Greek Classical and Renaissance Classical, and not Roman Classical, because these notions are sometimes not differentiated. But I think this is a very promising sign that first Trump talks about the Dome in Florence, now he talks about making buildings beautiful. So, we should continue on this road.

Beauty is intelligible. This is a very important point because it goes beyond opinion. People say what is my taste is my thing, and I have the right to find this beautiful, and you have another opinion. But I want to put a notion of beauty against that which is intelligible. It goes to the Italian question of the Golden Mean in Renaissance paintings and buildings, but it is also a standard of composition. It pertains to the famous debate between Schiller and Kant, where Kant in his Critique of Judgement said any arabesque which a painter throws against the wall is more beautiful than a piece of art where you can recognize the intention of the artist. Schiller got very upset about that, and wrote many of his aesthetical writings exactly to rebut this idea of Kant. He said there must be a notion borne out of reason of beauty, and then if the empirical performance and evidence conforms with that idea of reason, it is good, but not the other way around.

Since we are talking about Beethoven, and I recently wrote an open letter to defend Classical performance of Beethoven and I vowed that I would initiate a campaign to really end the acceptance of Classical music being destroyed by the modernists. And end the ugliness in music, which Lyn also did not like, as you previously heard.

I want to talk to you a little bit about “Fidelio,” because this is an opera which is very dear to my heart, and it was very dear to Lyn’s heart. The two of us really thought it was our opera, for reasons which I will come to in a second. First of all, concerning the narrative of “Fidelio,” it definitely is referring to real historical events. I think more research needs to be done, and if some of you, our listeners and audience, feel compelled to join in that, you are welcome. Because we have certain hints, but in the literature about the origins of the libretto of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” there are different views. But I think a very probable hypothesis is that it pertains the arrest and imprisonment of the Marquis de Lafayette, who as you know, was a very much an ally of the American Revolution. And in that capacity, he drew the anger of the then-British Prime Minister, William Pitt, who put pressure on the Austrian emperor to put Lafayette in jail. And there he was for several years in a dungeon. He was then freed among other things, by the courageous intervention of his wife Adrienne, who joined him in the incarceration. And then because of an unbelievable international campaign involving many VIPs appealing to Emperor Franz, he finally was released. He was released in 1797, and only five months after that, the Frenchman Jean-Nicolas Bouilly published the libretto which Beethoven then used, called Leonore, or Married Love [Léonore, ou l’Amour Conjugal].

This is, as I said, very dear to my heart, because when Lyn was put in jail innocently by the Bush Sr. Administration, I launched something called Operation Florestan. Maybe you can show this picture [Fig. 1]. This was a situation where Lyn was put in jail by a combination of the British, the Bush apparatus, and also there were clearly some collaborations with certain Soviet forces. So, when you read this article, you have to see that in 1989, the [berlin] Wall had not yet fallen, the situation was still extremely tense between the Soviet Union and the West. [See EIR article: https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1989/ eirv16n11-19890310/eirv16n11-19890310_022-operation_florestan_will_save_la.pdf] So, some of these things have to be seen in the context in which they were written, but I think the setting of putting Lyn in jail innocently, deprived the American population from access to the most beautiful ideas probably ever written and thought in the history of the United States.

What we did with Operation Florestan was that we talked for about five years to thousands and thousands of VIPs. We had probably a couple of thousand signatures from sitting parliamentarians all over the world, from generals, from chiefs of staff, from bishops, from cardinals, from writers, from other notables. And we launched this campaign with the iédea that Operation Florestan, being modelled on the “Fidelio” opera and the example of Lafayette, that we would get Lyn out of jail. That was by no means certain because when Lyn was given this extremely harsh sentence, it was meant that he would die in jail. So, we launched this campaign.

Now I want to talk a little bit about the “Fidelio” to make clear why this is an absolute parallel to what happened to us. First of all, the actual narrative in the “Fidelio” opera is that Florestan is kept as a prisoner by Don Pizarro, a tyrant who basically keeps him there as a political prisoner because he fears that Florestan might reveal some very comprising truth about Pizarro. His wife, Leonore, dresses up as a man; she calls herself Fidelio. She gets hired by the dungeon guard, Rocco. And Rocco’s daughter, Marzelline, falls in love with Fidelio who she thinks is a man, despite the fact that she has a fiancé, Jaquino. In the beginning of the opera, you hear now this beautiful quartet, for which I ask our singers to get ready. This is still at the very beginning of the setting. The four characters — Leonore, Rocco, Jaquino, and Marzelline — are all singing. The beauty about this quartet is that they all sing about their hopes, their inspirations, and they are all different. But despite the fact that they are all very different, the harmonious composition is one of the most beautiful examples of the art of Beethoven. Now, let’s hear “Mir ist so wunderbar.”

[Quartet performed live]

Thank you very much. The reason why we have to do it like this is because neither YouTube nor the record companies allow you, because of copyright issues, to just use some of the performances. So, that’s why we’re doing it in a little bit of an improvised way; so please have an understanding that that’s the reason why we have to do it that way. This was obviously well done, and extremely beautiful.

Now, after this development in the beginning, Pizarro comes to the dungeon to look at the prisoners, because he has learned that the minister wants to come to inspect things. He is his political enemy. And he is afraid the minister will meet Florestan, and then he could reveal these secrets. So, he wants Florestan to be killed. So, he tells Rocco to go to the dungeon and kill Florestan. Rocco does not want to do it, but then eventually he agrees to at least dig the grave, and have then the corpse of Florestan buried. So, he takes Fidelio with him, because it is heavy work and he is a little bit old. So, Leonore and Rocco go into the dungeon, and then Leonore asks Rocco that the prisoners should be allowed to see the light of day, because they are in the dark. Then comes the most beautiful chorus, the Prisoners’ Chorus, which is very famous. If you don’t have it in your ear, you should go home and listen to the whole opera; which you should do in any case.

So then, Florestan, who is struggling in the dark, who has fever, who is feeling horrible, has this beautiful vision that Leonore comes and he sees her as an angel. This again is one of the most beautiful arias you can imagine. So then, Leonore/Fidelio asks Rocco that he allows her to give the prisoner some bread and wine. And while doing that, she recognizes her husband. So, then Pizarro arrives, and he is already moving with the dagger to kill Florestan. Then Leonore throws herself between her husband and Pizarro and says you have to first kill his wife. She threatens Pizarro with a pistol. At that point, the trumpets sound to announce the arrival of the minister. Then, basically the danger is over, and Florestan and Leonore embrace each other and then comes this unbelievable duet of joy, “O namenlose Freude!” While we are hearing this now as an audio, I want you to focus on the absolute beauty of the emotions — the joy, the limitless joy, the nameless joy which unites Leonore and Florestan. It is that emotion which is love; and it is that emotion which is pure joy. The same joy which Beethoven celebrates also in the Ninth Symphony in the Ode to Joy, especially the last movement when he talks about Schiller’s Ode to Joy and this becomes the chorus.

So, let’s now listen to the “O namenlose Freude!”

[Duet is played]

So after that, the minister opens all the dungeons; the prisoners come out and are free. He recognizes Florestan, his friend, then everybody joins in the great finale, the beautiful chorus, the so-called Heil chorus where they celebrate the love of mankind, the love between the two spouses, the absolute victory of freedom over tyranny, and what man can do if you have a good plan, there can be absolutely the defeat of all tyrants. This emotion, this idea that if you struggle for a good cause, and that you overcome all the difficulties that you arrive at this higher level of sublime feeling; this is expressed in this beautiful music. So, let’s hear the “Heil sei dem Tag, Heil sei der Stunde” chorus clip.

[Chorus is played]

Well, this is only the beginning, and I would really urge you to listen to a very good performance of the entire Fidelio. There is a very beautiful one with Christa Ludwig and probably many others, but I really think you should take the time to listen to the entire opera.

So, well, I had a very urgent need to go and see such an opera. It’s a very personal thing, because as you know, in a few days it is one year since Lyn has passed away. And around the Christmas period, I just wanted really badly to see a performance of Florestan. And contrary to my normal habit when I look at the reviews and critiques before I go, which I have not done for a long time, because they are all bad generally. I just went to a performance in the Darmstadt Theatre without checking it out beforehand. And maybe it was a shock, but I think it was a healthy shock, because it was so absolutely terrible that I felt to write the open letter which I mentioned earlier, and which you may have read. [https://larouchepub.com/hzl/2020/4703-year_of_beethoven-hzl.html]

Because what this opera performance did was not only to apply Regietheater to the staging. Regietheater, as you know, is this terrible thing which was developed in the 1960s and has been used ad nauseum a zillion times since, where modern Regietheater would just take a Classical composition of Schiller or Shakespeare or some other Classical poet or dramatist, and put his own projection of what he thinks is relevant and how it should be interpreted. Then you have soldiers not dressed in historical costumes, but sitting on Harley Davidsons or being Nazi officers, just to project whatever the personal opinion of the director is. And normally they have at least one naked scene in it; they copulate on the stage. There were performances which were so ugly, actually pornographic. This has been going on for more than 50 years, so it’s not exactly original. But until recently, this kind of Regietheater was limited to the staging, the words, but they never really attacked the music.

So what happened in this performance was, not only did they apply all the terrible elements of Regietheater — having film clips while people were singing, so it was completely chaotic — but for the first time, they also changed the music. Namely this grand finale, of which you just hear two minutes of the beginning, and a modernist composer with the name of Annette Schlünz, who comes from the Eisler school tradition. This is this basically going to this whole idea of Brecht and Eisler that you also can have the Verfremdung [distancing] effect which is the idea that you should no longer allow the audience to identify with the people on the stage and become elevated; but you have to interrupt this identification every five seconds by a sound or a movie clip or something which interrupts this process; which makes it absolutely unbearable. So, this woman, Mrs. Schlünz, writes in the introduction to the program that she took this music of the final chorus, repeating a beat, then stopping suddenly, introducing alien sounds, have eight vocalists distributed in the audience who then all of a sudden get up, and if you are unhappy and one of these people stands behind you, you can have a heart attack. Then trumpets from the balconies. She described that she had the fantasy of sitting at the mixing console of the music studio, speeding up the music. That when the actual joy in the chorus is expressed, according to her it becomes like a jubalization machine; like children becoming completely hyper when they lose control of their emotions.

So obviously, this woman is completely unable emotionally to comprehend the sublime notions of the music expressed that we saw with the nameless joy, or the love between the couple, or the joy of the victory over tyranny. All of this is alien to them.

Now, where does this come from? Well, this comes all from a very sophisticated, extremely huge CIA operation called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. This was an operation in the postwar period which broke up as huge scandal in 1967. Just recently, there was an exhibition at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of this CCF in Berlin. There was an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily where the author, in a very rare moment of honesty, says — the title of the article is “How One Steals the Big Words”; meaning freedom and so forth. He says: “The worrisome quintessence of what the CIA did is that they did not sponsor some sinister right-wing ideology, but they helped the left liberalism to become the hegemonic mainstream standard of intellectuals in the West today.” That is exactly what I referred to in the beginning. Why is it that the Left and the liberals are siding with the CIA against Trump and against being on the side of the coup? This is the result of this process.

How did the CCF work? Remember that we are soon celebrating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, where the United States and the Soviet Union fought together in the fight against Nazism. This was going very deep. You will have on the 26th of April in Thurgau at the Elbe, the celebration of when the American and Soviet soldiers met for the first time. This was a very emotional event. For the Russians, this goes extremely deep, because they lost in the Great Patriotic War [World War II] 27 million people. They have absolutely not forgotten that, and they feel, when they allowed for example the German unification in 1989, all the promises were given to them that NATO would never expand to the East, never to the borders of Russia. They feel a tremendous sense of betrayal. This is a whole other story, but going back to this unified fight between the Americans and the Soviet Union, this was the case when Franklin D Roosevelt was still President; who had unfortunately a very untimely death at the end of the Second World War. When Truman came in, this was a much smaller man, and we all have heard from Lyn that he said when he was in India, and he got the news, the soldiers around him were asking “what do you think this signifies?” And Lyn said, I think we just lost a great man for a very little man.

It was the little man Truman who succumbed to the influence of Churchill in the postwar period. Therefore, this great alliance between the Americans and the Soviets was then replaced. Churchill announced in this famous Fulton, Missouri speech on March 5, 1946, where he announced practically what became the Cold War. That meant in the United States, elements of what Eisenhower would later call the military-industrial complex, which has turned in the meantime to what people mistakenly the Deep State, which is really the British subversion of the American intelligence services. They got more influence. In order to change the positive alliance between the Americans and the Soviets into a Cold War, and therefore a geopolitical confrontation, they thought that they had to change the axioms of thinking in the American people, but also in the European people. They had to change that which had allowed Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was after all very much anti-Wall Street, and they wanted to make sure that these values were absolutely replaced.

So in the United States, it was the attack on the tradition and heritage of Roosevelt, and in Europe it was especially that people thought they had to really destroy the roots of the people in their European Classical tradition. The CCF under the leadership of Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner, who at that time was the head of the Office of Policy Coordination in the State Department, were leading the effort. The CCF later was moved into the department for Covert Operations, and then proceeded to set up a huge cultural warfare in 35 countries. They set up 20 major cultural magazines; they controlled practically without exception all art exhibitions, concerts, who became a famous painter, who became a famous author or musician. Many of the people who cooperated with that were unaware of what they were part of; but some of them absolutely were aware.

The CCF was in continuation with the Frankfurt School, which had moved in the Second World War to exile in the United States. It was taken over by the U.S. intelligence services. One was Marcuse, another one was Theodore Adorno. Adorno explicitly said that it was now necessary to eliminate all

. In a piece called “Cultural Critique and Society” in 1949, he wrote that after the atrocity of Auschwitz, no one could write any poems anymore. He also had the absolutely insane idea that it was German idealism like that of Friedrich Schiller which would lead automatically to a radicalism and Nazism. So, that is something I really want to make a point for people to think. The image of man which is associated with the German Classical period, with the thinking of people like Lessing, Bach, Beethoven, Schiller, Humboldt, and many others, is an idea where man is principally good. Man is limitlessly perfectible. The aesthetic education allows for all potentialities in the human being to develop into a beautiful soul, into a beautiful mind, into genius. This idea of the potential of every human being to contribute through his or her self-perfection, to the common good of humanity is a very beautiful idea of man. And it has absolutely nothing to do with, and is the total opposite of what the Nazi ideology was, which was a blood and soil ideology. It was the racist idea that the Aryan race is superior to the colored races. That is what you find today in some people who say that China is the first time there is a threat coming from a non-Caucasian race to the West. Here you have it; that is Nazi ideology. I don’t need to tell you who says these things.

Now, one component to understand the work of the CCF was that also the CIA at that time started the idea that it is OK to lie. That if you have a national security reason or whatever you call it to be such a reason, it allows you to just say whatever you want, and to put in the world all lies possible as long as you have creditable deniability and you can pull you neck out the situation later on. Remember, more recently, Bolton basically said that it is completely legitimate to lie for such reason.

Obviously, the question of how the Classical German culture, which was probably the most culturally advanced period in the history of mankind; and I want to debate that if somebody wants to pick a fight. How did that end up in the pit of the 12 years of National Socialism, is obviously one of the most important questions. How does a great culture plunge into the depths of horrible things? This is a question which Americans had to go through in some recent administrations as well. How did the beautiful idea of the American Revolution turn into what was the policy of interventionist wars and everything we know? That transformation in Germany is a long story; a lot of things went into it. The Romantic movement which started maybe innocently as a literature movement, but became political and was taken over very quickly. The cultural pessimism which went with it; the destruction of the Classical forms through Romanticism; the actual cultural pessimism of people like Schopenhauer; Nietzsche; the different youth movements; the anti-technology youth movements before World War I. Then naturally, World War I, which was a long-orchestrated, British-steered event. The Versailles Treaty, which was completely unjust and could not function for a peace order. The Great Depression of 1929 and the beginning of the 1930s, and then finally World War II, and the takeover by the Nazis. But this is a long, complex story, with many factors going into it. A lot of manipulations. And the role of the British can be traced in many of these aspects.

So, I just say this: to say that the argument of Adorno, that it was German idealism that led to the Nazi atrocity, is just one of these absolute lies.

The CCF then proceeded to deliberately attack Classical music, Classical culture, Classical painting, Classical poetry. For example, they had an enormous repertoire. In 1952, they conducted a one-month music festival in Paris, which they called “Masterpieces of the 20th century,” with more than 100 concerts, ballets, operas, and they introduced all the modernist composers, atonal music, 12-tone music, Arnold Schönberg, Alban Burg, Paul Hindemith, Claude Débussy, Benjamin Britten. Some of these are full-atonal, some are mixed forms, but it was all meant to destroy the idea of Classical composition.

Why is this so absolutely bad? Because the idea that in a chromatic scale, all tones have an equal status, eliminates the possibility of the higher degrees of freedom, which you have if you have a polyphonic, harmonic contrapuntal composition, because it eliminates the possibility for ambiguity, for moving from one scale into another, of creating and fully exhausting a musical idea. It completely eliminates the idea of Motivführung [thorough composition], discussed so many times by Norbert Brainin, the first violinist of the Amadeus Quartet, in long, long beautiful discussions with Lyndon LaRouche: namely the idea that you have a musical idea — a poetical idea, put into music — and then, through thorough composition, you develop this, you exhaust the potential, and you come to a conclusion.

Now, that technique has been described, and should be studied, by Norbert Brainin in beautiful master classes he did with the Schiller Institute, for example, in Slovakia. Lyn has written in the book Dennis showed you in the beginning, Think Like Beethoven, how Joseph Haydn’s music was developed then by Mozart in the Haydn Quartets, reaching the complexity of the late Beethoven Quartets.

Lyn has basically said that Beethoven’s achievement in counterpoint, has never been approximated by any composer to date. I think I can absolutely agree. Lyn even said—and I know some people were upset when I mentioned this recently in a webcast—that Beethoven is the absolutely towering giant of all composers. People said, “What about Bach?” I’m not denying Bach. But I have a quote by Lyn where he says: “Beethoven marks an Everest, which dwarfs even Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Schumann and Brahms to be foothills.” Now, I’m not deprecating these composers. I just want to say that Beethoven is in a completely different league of composition, by applying this method, really in the most advanced form.

Now, Lyn wrote, over 100 pieces on music, where in this book you only find some of them. Already in 1976, he wrote a piece called “Laughter, Music, and Creativity,” which for Lyn was pretty much the same thing. He said that the 12-tone, or atonal music is a reactionary retreat led by dried-out 20th-century composers, who cannot compose. He again makes the argument, that the degrees of freedom are completely eliminated.

One important point, in my view, in this whole thing, is what the harmonic contrapuntal, polyphonic form of composition allows, it creates stress; it creates dissonance. But then, in a lawful way, in an expandable, lawful way, these stress moments get resolved, and you have the sense of completion. While in atonal and 12-tone music you have a lot of stress, for sure, but it’s never resolved. The audience is left with a complete feeling of disarray. And, therefore, exactly what the purpose and beautiful function of great Classical music is—that it elevates the emotion, that it elevates the mind, makes mankind more noble—that is completely destroyed. The whole idea of aesthetical education is denied, it’s opposed, it is meant to be made extinct. This is why this is such a devastating attack on this idea, that a moral improvement of the population can be accomplished.

What Lyn wrote in “What Is Music, Really?” which he gave as a talk on May 10, 2015, is that beauty is creativity per se, and the aim of it is to unleash the beauty of mankind. That was something that was absolutely known by many people. It was known by Confucius, who basically said that if you look at the music of a country, you can say what kind of state that country is in: whether it’s disorganized, whether it’s functioning, or not.

Now, if you apply that Confucian principle to the United States, or much of Europe today, you can say these countries don’t function very well, because their music is, for the most part, pretty horrible. It was also what Albert Einstein, for example, celebrated: Many times before he could continue working on his physical discoveries, he would play the violin, and put himself in that kind of a creative mindset.

That is why I think we cannot allow the destruction of Beethoven. This is why the defense of Classical music, of not allowing people to desecrate the greatest music ever written, that is why I wrote this appeal, asking not only all the lovers of Classical music in Germany, but actually all over the world, that we declare this Year of Beethoven, to be the end of the tolerance for ugliness.

I’m not saying we should forbid it. Let them have their atonal concerts. Let them have three people in the audience, because normal people really don’t like that kind of music, but, let them have it. I’m not for banning it. I’m just saying they should not have the right to destroy the great compositions of the Classical composers, just because they cannot write any music themselves which is beautiful.

I also absolutely want to urge you, that the Beethoven Year must also be the year of the exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche. If you read what Lyn writes about music — it should be astonishing to anybody to find somebody who’s a total politician, a statesman, an economist, a scientist, and that he would also have such unbelievable knowledge of music.

I can remember one time, when Lyn was talking with Norbert Brainin for two days, when he visited us at our farm, that after these two days, Norbert Brainin said: “This man knows more about music than I do.” I absolutely can agree with that. Because Lyn knew not only the inner meanings of all the works, the historical periods, but he also knew especially what it meant to “play between the notes,” to have a sense of the inner intention of the composers, and he could communicate that in the most beautiful way.

The fact that Lyn’s ideas are being denied to the American people, and to much of the world population, because of the unjust incarceration, because of the same apparatus which was behind the coup against Trump: I think that when President Trump said a few days ago, that one must guarantee that what happened to him, with Russiagate and with the coup attempt, must never happen again — well, there is one absolutely durable way how this will never happen again, and that is the exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche. Because, when that happens, it will become clear, that the apparatus of British infiltration of the U.S., of the idea to run the world as an empire based on the Anglo-American special relationship — which was put into place since Teddy Roosevelt, and which has been revived by many Presidents in the meantime — and that is the apparatus which tried to destroy the Presidency of President Trump.

So, if my husband is exonerated, for the sake of the beauty of his ideas, then a durable freedom in the United States, with the United States returning to be a republic, will be absolutely possible.

So, let’s make the Year of Beethoven, the year of the exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche. [applause]

SPEED: Thank you very much, Helga. We’ll go right to questions. I want to know whether we have a copy of A Manual on the Rudiments of Registration and Tuning. OK. If we don’t have it, let me just mention something as we go to questions. Some people know that it was Lyn who commissioned the writing of A Manual on Registration and Tuning. John Sigerson was one of the co-writers of that. He’s here. Also Renée Sigerson worked on it.

I cite this because perhaps John or Renée will say something about the occasion at which Lyn began to insist that the problem with the music he was hearing, was that it was incorrectly tuned. Many of us could not figure out what he was talking about. We knew there were different tunings, and we knew that the tuning at the Metropolitan Opera was high. But he was insisting on something that then ended up being verified by Liliana Gorini, the leader of the LaRouche movement in Italy, one of our key members there. Working with her father on this, she went to the library and discovered a document involving Giuseppe Verdi having passed a law when he was a member of Parliament, legislating that the tuning should be at A=432, which was exactly what Lyn was talking about.

I don’t tell this story to impress people. I tell it to say that there are some very fundamental matters that we want to get at with this. We don’t want to avoid controversy, is what I’m trying to say. Because, by not avoiding the controversy around this question, for example, the issue of European culture which will be one thing I will be referring to in a minute—by not avoiding that, not avoiding the controversy around what’s ugly, what “taste” is versus “good music”/ “bad music” — by not avoiding that, we might be able to reunify this nation. It’s probably the only actual, efficient way to do it.

So, it’s very important for us, in this discussion today, to take up all those questions — or begin the process of taking them up. I just wanted to say that, as we go to the questions. Again, I’ll alternate with the questions here, and then I’ll alternate with the questions that have been sent by email or YouTube, and so on.

Q: Hi Helga, this is Denise [ham]. I wanted to bring up the fact that in the Western world, in the United States, in particular, there is a war against children going on. In fact there is a book by that name and it was rewritten and updated, and 10 years later, it was The War Against Children of Color: Psychiatry Targets Inner City Youth [by Peter Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin]. In this book it puts out the idea, that children as young as 5, 6, 7 years old, especially Black children living in poor areas, were targeted; and the idea was that they were going to grow up to be criminals, and they said this explicitly. And what did they do to stop this? They brought in Ritalin and other mind-destroying drugs.

You can imagine, we know that the human brain is not completely developed until the 24th year of life. And you have at the age of 5, 6 and 7 children being put on Ritalin, so they are being destroyed.

Also, besides that, you have this newest thing in New Jersey, and I think across the country, is that children in middle schools are being taught about “gender issues,” you know, “what sex are you?” This is destroying these children, confusing them, and it is mental rape — this is mental rape against children. Rather than having the idea of beauty, and music, of poetry, science being brought up in class — this is what you have. I would like you to address that and let us know what you think can be done about it. Thanks very much.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think this is something which, if it’sis not corrected, will lead to the demise of the West. Because there is right now a huge campaign against China: That there is supposedly a fight of the systems, where the Chinese represent a threat to the value system of democracy, of human rights, of the liberal system of the West, and that that must be somehow contained and be defeated.

I can tell you that if we cannot, in the United States, or in Europe, for that matter, go back to a Classical education in science, in culture, and leave the trends you just described correctly, Denise — the absolute exposure to violence, through video games, the drugs; the addiction to digital overconsumption, children who are left by their parents and their environment to watch and play for hours and hours on their laptop, on their smartphone, on their Play Station, there are now many neurological studies which show, that when you do that, the synapses of the brain connect in a completely different way, and completely eliminate the possibility for truly creative work.

Now if you take that brain damage, which is caused by these phenomena, and also the whole idea of Ritalin, and the drug addiction, the violence — if you take all these factors together, I can tell you that our youth are not going to be an effective, competitive, or even equal, partner in the world community. Because the Asians are not doing that. I mean, sure there are some problems with the digital addiction in Asia as well.

But they are doing something we are not doing in the West, and that is, that they are reviving their 5,000-year-old ancient traditions in philosophy, painting, poetry, and are very proud to be some of the cradles of civilizations. They combine that idea of being based in the best tradition, with an absolute optimistic future orientation, which you see in terms of their ambitious programs for space colonization, for fusion research, and other breakthrough areas of knowledge.

So, I think that the West — I’m saying the “West,” because things in the United States and Europe are similar in this respect — if we do not shape up and really go back to a universal education, in the tradition of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who was the co-thinker of Friedrich Schiller; and he was one of the pillars of the German Classical period, who by the way, was extremely influential in the education system of the United States throughout the 19th century, and he had this idea that you had to have as a goal of education, a harmonious person, by teaching in certain areas which are more suitable to this effect than others: namely the command of your own high language, in the best poetic expressions, that would mean Shakespeare and other great poets who have written in English; then the universal history, natural science, philosophy; and that would then lead to the idea of the development of all potentialities, which are embedded in each child.

That was the Humboldt system, which existed in Germany, at least in some form until 1970, when it was replaced by an education reform, which consciously threw out that idea. But it is something which influenced every professor in the United States in the 19th century, who either studied in Germany or who studied with somebody who had been influenced by Humboldt. So there is an American tradition to connect to that. And I think that is what we have to fight for, because even if you don’t agree that this is what should happen, I think if the West is not going back to its own best traditions, they will just be pushed into the corner of history, and will become completely irrelevant.

Now I know that in the United States there is right now a tremendous possibility, because President Trump announced in his State of the Union address that he wants to fight for the full funding of the Artemis program: If you want to have lots of children and young people become astronauts, space scientists, and work on this perspective, you have to have an education system which goes with it, and you have to transform a lot of the children who are now in the condition you are describing, and actually get them in such a better condition; which is why we need a space CCC program [FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps], which must absolutely focus on this unified, harmonized personality, because, as Krafft Ehricke said: It is never the technology which determines whether it’s good or bad; it’s always the human being, who uses the technology. So we have a tremendous job in front of us; I think the potential is absolutely there, but it needs a real studying of what must be such a humanist education. And I think this is what only our organization can bring into this fight.

31. januar 2020 — Vi har lige erfaret, at det kinesiske nyhedsagentur Xinhua skrev om vores koncert “En Musikalsk Dialog mellem Kulturer”, som fandt sted den 29. november 2019. Koncerten blev arrangeret af Schiller Instituttet, Russisk-Dansk Dialog, Det Russiske Hus og Det Kinesiske Kulturcenter i København.

Her er et link til koncertsiden med videooptagelsen og programmet: EN MUSIKALSK DIALOG MELLEM KULTURER den 29. november 2019

Her er billeder og Google-oversættelser af dækning på:

1. Xinhuas hjemmesiden
2. MSN’s kinesiske hjemmeside
3. www.dzwww.com fra Shandong, Konfutses hjemby.

I bunden findes den kinesiske tekst.

1. Xinhuanet:

 

Download (PDF, Unknown)

Et åbent brev i Beethoven-året til de tyskere (og andre), der holder af klassisk musik:

Menneskehedens værdighed er givet i jeres hånd, Bevar den!
Den synker med jer! Med jer vil den sig hæve.
      – Friedrich von Schiller

Læs også: ‘Alle mennesker bliver brødre’:
Den årtierlange kamp for Beethovens niende Symfoni, af Michelle Rasmussen

Her er den engelske udgave af Helga Zepp-LaRouches artikel:

Download (PDF, Unknown)

Her er den oprindelige tyske udgave:

Von der Unfähigkeit, Musik zu komponieren

Ein Offener Brief an die Klassikliebhaber Deutschlands im Beethoven-Jahr:
Die Grenze des Zumutbaren ist endgültig überschritten!

Se også en video trailer 6 min.:

Download (PDF, Unknown)

Arrangører: Schiller Instituttet, Russisk-Dansk Dialog,
Det Russiske Hus og Det Kinesiske Kulturcenter

EN MUSIKALSK DIALOG
MELLEM KULTURER

Gratis adgang
29. november 2019 kl. 19

Russisk Center for Videnskab og Kultur
Vester Voldgade 11, København, ved Rådhuspladsen

Medvirkende: Musikere fra Kina, Rusland, Albanien, Poland, Sverige og Danmark (se billedet)

Også: DANMARK: SCHILLER INSTITUTTETS KOR

I en tid, hvor der er alt for meget politisk splid i verden, og verdens lande i stedet burde arbejde sammen om menneskehedens fælles mål, er det ekstra vigtigt, at vi på alle måder bygger bro mellem verdens nationer og de mange forskelligartede kulturer. Når vi oplever det skønne i andre kulturer, skaber det gensidig forståelse og et grundlag for samarbejde og fred. Klassisk kunst er derfor en vigtig nøgle til en sådan dialog mellem kulturer, og det er grunden til, at vi afholder denne koncert!

Info: 25 12 50 33, 53 57 00 51 si@schillerinstitut.dk

Den 14. juli (EIRNS) – Den undergravende rolle af britiske imperialistiske interesser bliver i stigende grad afsløret for verden. To store åbenbaringer alene i denne uge: For det første blev den tidligere britiske ambassadør i USA, Sir Kim Darroch, af sine egne rapporter til udenrigsministeriet, afsløret i at forsøge at undergrave den politik, som USA’s præsident fører, alt imens at han arbejder for en “hændelse” i den Persiske Golf, hvor en amerikaner dræbes, og skylden skydes på Iran (en typisk britisk operation under ‘falsk-flag’, i lighed med den der blev udført af ‘de Hvide Hjelme’ i Syrien) for at tilsidesætte præsidentens afvisning af at gå i krig mod Iran.

For det andet gennemførte briterne en åbenlys handling af sørøveri ud for Gibraltar ved at beslaglægge et iransk olietankskib, hvorefter de iscenesatte en hændelse i Hormuz-strædet, hvor Iran fejlagtigt blev anklaget for til gengæld at forsøge at beslaglægge et britisk olietankskib. Som rapporteret nedenfor var denne hændelse iscenesat af den britiske militære efterretningstjeneste, som [imidlertid] forfejlede sin hensigt, og nu er blevet afsløret som en svindel.

Siden mordet på Jack Kennedy og den britiske succes med at trække USA ind i en uamerikansk kolonial krig i Indokina, har det anglo-hollandske neoliberale finansielle system systematisk overtaget den amerikanske økonomi. Dette blev muliggjort ved at udnytte USA’s fallit på grund af omkostningerne ved den folkemorderiske asiatiske krig og ved den kulturelle undergravning af en demoraliseret ungdomsgeneration gennem en ‘ny opiumskrig’, den anti-videnskabelige “miljø”-bevægelse, ledet af den kongelige familie, og udbredelsen af degenereret og grim “musik” for derved at nægte ungdommens adgang til skønheden i den klassiske musik og kultur. I stedet for den hamiltoniske politik med øremærket kredit, som indført under Roosevelts New Deal og under Kennedys rumprogram, og en udviklingspolitik for atomkraft/fusionsenergi, blev slagordene britisk “frihandel”, “centralbankens uafhængighed” og lignende uamerikanske svindelnumre sat i stedet. Resultatet var spekulanters overtagelse af økonomien, outsourcing af vores industrier, legalisering af stoffer, hvilket medførte ødelæggelse af industri og infrastruktur og det moralske forfald der karakteriserer USA i dag, som det delvis dokumenteres i EIR’s specialnummer: “The Bitter Truth of U.S. economic “Recovery” (Den bitre sandhed om USA’s økonomiske opsving). “Intet mindre end en tilbagevenden til Hamiltons politik – ikke kun i USA, men i forbindelse med de store eurasiske kulturer – Rusland, Kina og Indien – som foreslået af Lyndon LaRouches ‘fire love’ og hans ide om et Nyt Bretton Woods – kan stoppe sammenbruddet af de vestlige økonomier og faren for global krig.

Præsident Donald Trump har taget små, men dramatiske skridt til at forfægte sit personlige lederskab og bryde med “etablissementet i Washington”, som har forvandlet begge politiske partier til spytslikkere for britisk imperialistisk politik med permanent krigsførelse og “fri markedsdiktatur” af London og Wall Streets finansielle karteller. Han har taget skridt til at afslutte det sidste levn af Den kolde Krig i Korea; han forhandler en afslutning på den “endeløse krig” i Afghanistan; han er begyndt at genoprette optimismen fra Kennedys rumprogram gennem hans Måne-Mars-mission; han har holdt venlige møder med lederne af Rusland, Kina og Indien (blandt andre) på sidelinjen af G20 i Osaka, til stor rædsel for briterne og de neo-konservative i hans eget kabinet; han har ophævet de absurde og destruktive “anti-kulstof”-regler, der blev pålagt af Obama, og samtidig gjort gældende at ren luft og vand er det virkelige miljøproblem; han har gjort sig til talsmand for “fair trade”-politik i modsætning til det neo-koloniale mantra om “globalisering”.

Truslerne om krig og økonomisk disintegration eksisterer stadig trods disse små trin. Helga Zepp-LaRouche pegede i sin ugentlige webcast i lørdags på det centrale stridspunkt, der er involveret i at afslutte disse trusler og indlede et nyt paradigme for menneskeheden, ved at tage fat på forfaldet i borgernes moralske karakter, som præsenteret i Friedrich Schillers idé om den æstetiske uddannelse af mennesket. “Det er absolut nødvendigt,” sagde Zepp-LaRouche, “at den moralske opbygning af menneskeheden går hånd i hånd med videnskabelige og teknologiske fremskridt, fordi videnskab og teknologi alene ikke har svaret på spørgsmålet om menneskets moralske adfærd.” “Det er den æstetiske uddannelse, indflydelsen af stor kunst, klassisk musik, klassisk poesi og de andre klassiske kunstarter, som har denne forædlende virkning på mennesket, og derfor må disse to ting absolut gå sammen.”

Schiller Instituttet vil den 20. juli fejre 50-årsdagen for menneskehedens landing på Månen med begivenheder på Manhattan og andre steder rundt omkring i verden med både videnskabelige og musikalske præsentationer, der også fejrer Lyndon LaRouches grundlæggende princip om, at den kreative proces inden for kunst og videnskab er en og samme.

Schiller Instituttet afholdt den første amerikanske nationale konference i mere end femten år i weekenden på Præsidentens Dag, hvilket var en enorm succes i henseende til kvaliteten af præsentationerne og deltagelsen af tilhængere fra hele verden der deltog på konferencen. Konferencen, der nu præsenteres i sin helhed nedenfor, giver et sandfærdigt og optimistisk syn på mulighederne for menneskeheden som helhed for at overvinde den krise, som verden står overfor, mens det tidligere regerende, nu døende Britiske Imperium, kæmper for sin overlevelse mod den nye verdensorden, som tager fat i visionen fra Lyndon og Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

Panel I

Lyndon
LaRouche taler:
Et talent, der blev brugt godt

Jacques
Cheminade,
Præsident for Solidarité & Progrès: Lyndon LaRouches kommende
verden

John
Gong,
Professor i økonomi ved ‘University of International Business and
Economics’, Beijing: Kinesiske investeringer og amerikansk
infrastruktur under nye sino-amerikanske relationer

H.E.
Ambassadør Vassily A. Nebenzia,
Ambassadør and Permanent Repræsentant for den Russiske Føderation
ved de Forenede Nationer, præsenteret af rådgiver
Theodore Strzhizhovskiy,
den Russiske Føderations mission ved FN: Prospekter for øst-vest
samarbejde: Den Russiske Føderations Synspunkt (transkript)

William
Binney,
tidligere teknisk direktør, NSA

Jason
Ross,
Schiller Instituttet, medforfatter af “Udvidelse af den Nye
Silkevej til Vestasien og Afrika”: Det presserende behov for et nyt
paradigme i Afrika

Dennis
Small,
EIR’s redaktør for Latinamerika: Retfærdighed i Verden – Hvorfor
Donald Trump må rense Lyndon LaRouche nu

Panel II

Video
af ’Den æstetiske uddannelse af mennesket for skønheden af sindet
og sjælen’ – Panel II

Schiller
Instituttets kombinerede kor:
Benjamin
Lylloff, arrangement: “Mo Li Hua” (“Jasmin Blomst”)
Benjamin
Lylloff, dirigent

H.T.
Burleigh,
arrangement: “Dyb flod” (“Deep River”)
William
L. Dawson,
arr: “Hver gang ånden kommer over mig” (“Ev’ry Time I Feel
the Spirit”)
Diane Sare, dirigent

Megan
Beets,
LaRouchePAC Videnskabelige Forskningsteam, “Kunstnerisk og moralsk
skønhed” (“Artistic and Moral Beauty“)

Bruce
Director,
kasserer, Schiller Instituttet i USA:
“Om LaRouches begreb om
betydningen af kunst for videnskaben, og videnskab for kunsten”

Diane
Sare,
administrerende direktør for Schiller Instituttets kor i New York
City: “Kor princippet”

Johannes
Brahms:
“Dem dunkeln Schoß der Heil’gen Erde”
(tekst fra Schillers
“Sangen om Klokken” (“Song of the Bell”)
Schiller
Instituttets kor
John Sigerson, dirigent

Johann
Sebastian Bach:
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D-dur, BWV 1050
I. Allegro
Schiller
Instituttets Orkester
John Sigerson, dirigent
Solister: Gregor
Kitzis, violin; Laura Thompson, fløjte; My-Hoa Steger, klaver

Ludwig
van Beethoven:
Choral Fantasia, Op. 80
Schiller Instituttets Orkester, Kor, og
Solister
John Sigerson, dirigent
My-Hoa Steger, klaver

Spørgsmål
& svar session

Panel III

Kesha
Rogers,
LaRouchePAC Politiske Komité, tidligere kandidat for den amerikanske
Kongres – Rummets grænseområder: Opfyldelsen af menneskehedens
skæbne som mennesket i universet

Thomas
Wysmuller,
Grundlæggende medlem af ‘Det rette klima stof” (“The Right
Climate Stuff”): Hvad NASA har gjort, og hvor NASA er på vej hen

Larry
Bell,
Grundlægger, Sasakawa Internationalt Center for Rumarkitektur,
‘College of Engineering’, Universitetet i Houston: Hvad der gør
mennesker enestående

Benjamin
Deniston,
LaRouchePAC Videnskabelige Forskningsteam: LaRouches Strategiske
Forsvar af Jorden

Hal
BH Cooper, Jr. PhD PE: Infrastrukturelle
behov for jernbane-, energi- og vandsystemer til at fremme den
fremtidige økonomiske udvikling af Afrika

Se videoerne her.

I en tid, hvor der er alt for meget politisk splid i verden, og verdens lande i stedet burde arbejde sammen om menneskehedens fælles mål, er det ekstra vigtigt, at vi på alle måder bygger bro mellem verdens nationer og de mange forskelligartede kulturer. Når vi oplever det skønne i andre kulturer, skaber det gensidig forståelse og et grundlag for samarbejde og fred. Klassisk kunst er derfor en vigtig nøgle til en sådan dialog mellem  kulturer, og det er grunden til, at vi afholder denne koncert.

Info: 25 12 50 33.

Arrangører: Schiller Instituttet, Russisk-Dansk Dialog, Det Russiske Hus og Det Kinesiske Kulturcenter.

Tid: 28. juni kl. 19.

Sted: Russisk Center for Videnskab og Kultur, Vester Voldgade 11, København (ved Rådhuspladsen).

Gratis adgang.

Program:

Download (PDF, Unknown)

I dag vil jeg guide jer til den fremtidige renæssance af klassisk kultur, som jeg er overbevist om, ikke ville have været mulig uden Lyndon LaRouches opdagelser om kreativitetens forrang, ikke blot i menneskelige relationer, men også i universet som helhed. Jeg træder i baggrunden til fordel for Lyndon LaRouche selv; og til fordel for forskellige uddrag af hans mange skrifter, og ligeledes klip fra video og audio, håber jeg at kunne komme ind på de hovedtemaer, som har optaget ham hele hans liv, som begyndte i 1922. Dette vil også være meget nyttigt, for det vil gøre det muligt for os at fortsætte, hvor Dennis Small slap i den foregående lektion, hvor han talte om den særdeles uheldige David Hume. Jeg vil diskutere den ondartede indflydelse fra den måske ondeste filosof til alle tider, en person, der er baseret på Hume, men som gjorde noget endnu værre; nemlig Immanuel Kant.

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Leder af Hjørring Musikskole, Christian Larsen.

Michelle Rasmussen, Schiller Instituttet; kandidat KV 2017 i København.

Michelle Rasmussen, der opstiller til kommunal- og regionsrådsvalg i København for Schiller Instituttets Venner, interviewede Christian Larsen den 3. nov. 2017.

Se alle kandidater i København, Brøndby, Aarhus og Randers: http://sive.dk/

København, 21. august, 2017 (Schiller Instituttet) – DR.dk Nordjylland rapporterer, at i Hjørring kommune, der har 65.000 indbyggere, »skal alle børn lære at spille et instrument. I børnehaven skal de lære at spille violin. Derefter skal de, frem til og med 5. klasse, have undervisning i forskellige instrumenter, korundervisning, og så skal de spille i orkester«.

I det kommende skoleår vil 1085 børn deltage i projektet, og på sigt er det hensigten, at alle børn skal deltage. Hjørring Musiske Skole har bl.a. indkøbt flere hundrede violiner og andre orkesterinstrumenter.

Christian Larsen, leder af Hjørrings Musiske Skole, sagde: »Vi gør det, fordi det er sjovt, og fordi børn netop i den alder har et meget stor potentiale til at udvikle hjernen, og når du spiller musik udvikler du dig kognitivt, motorisk og også følelsesmæssigt.«

I en baggrundssamtale med Schiller Instituttet tilføjede Christian Larsen også, socialt. Ideen startede i 2010 med et ønske fra græsrødder om at gentage en dansk version af Venezuelas El Sistema orkester-massebevægelse. Principperne for den danske version var, at det skulle være gratis, åbent for alle børn, med flere timers øvelse om ugen, fokusere på musisk udtryk snarer end teknik, understrege fællesskabet snarere end individet og omfatte »peer-to-peer« undervisning, hvor børn underviser børn ved siden af de voksnes undervisning. Projektet i Hjørring startede i 2011 med et enkelt orkester.

Omkostninger for det aktuelle projekt deles mellem skolesystemet og musikskolen. Samarbejdet er baseret på gensidig værdiskabelse og var ikke afhængigt af »nye penge« i systemet, men krævede blot en ændring i tankegang. De håber, det vil blive en model, som andre byer vil vedtage.

Siden rapporten på dansk fjernsyn, har der været stor, positiv feedback, og der er også flere former for græsrodsprojekter for musik i flere andre danske byer.

Christian Larsen understregede, at musikprojektet udvikler børns evne til at tænke kreativt, uden på forhånd at vide, hvad man skal gøre – at tænke uden på forhånd at få svaret at vide.

En mor, der blev interviewet i DR-artiklen, var også glad for, at hendes barn deltog i klassisk musik, som ikke mange i hendes egen generation i har været udsat for.

http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/regionale/nordjylland/i-hjoerring-kommune-skal-alle-boern-laere-spille-musik-fra-de-er-fire

Dialogen mellem kulturer, mellem selve sponsorerne, førte til den store succes – Schiller Instituttet, organisationen Russisk-Dansk Dialog, det Russiske Hus i København og det Kinesiske Kulturcenter. Koncerten afholdtes i det Russiske Center for Videnskab og Kultur, som repræsenterer den Russiske Føderations myndighed for forbindelse til Fællesskabet af Uafhængige Stater (fra det tidligere Sovjetunionen), russere i udlændighed og det internationale humanistiske samarbejde (Rossotrudnichestvo).

Følgende musikalske indslag er ikke vist i videoen: The following parts of the program are not shown in the video:

Gitta-Maria Sjöberg, sopran, Sverige/Danmark. Sweden/Denmark. Hun sang Rusalkas »Sangen til Månen« af Dvořák.

She sang Rusalka’s Song to the Moon by Dvořák accompanied by Christine Raft, pianist from Denmark.

Idil Alpsoy, sopran, Sverige/Danmark, Sweden, Denmark: sang sange fra Sibelius’ Op. 37 og 88.

She sang songs from Sibelius’ Op.37 and 88, accompanied by Christine Raft.

Programmet/Program:

Download (PDF, Unknown)

Video med danske undertekster:

Video with English subtitles:

Dansk: Klik her for en video, hvor sopran Gitta-Maria Sjöberg synger Rusalkas sang til Månen i en anden koncert (med en anden pianist)

English: Click here for a video where soprano Gitta-Maria Sjöberg sings Rusalka’s Song to the Moon during another concert (with another pianist).

17. februar, 2017 – De kom fra hele verden. De bragte gaver. Ikke gaver, man kunne røre med hænderne. Men gaver, der rørte sjælen. Gaver, i form af skøn musik og skøn dans.

Og folk kom for at høre dem. De blev ved med at komme, indtil der ikke var flere af de 120 pladser tilbage. Og da der ikke var plads til ekstra stole, stod de i gangene, og de stod i forhallen, og de sad bag gardinerne. De var danskere, og de var diplomater, og de var andre mennesker fra mange nationer, måske 180-200 i alt. Værtinden sagde, at der aldrig før havde været så mange i salen.

Dialogen mellem kulturer, mellem selve sponsorerne, førte til den store succes – Schiller Instituttet, organisationen Russisk-Dansk Dialog, det Russiske Hus i København og det Kinesiske Kulturcenter (som står for snarlig åbning, og som også leverede mad i pausen). Koncerten afholdtes i det Russiske Center for Videnskab og Kultur, som repræsenterer den Russiske Føderations myndighed for forbindelse til Fællesskabet af Uafhængige Stater (fra det tidligere Sovjetunionen), russere i udlændighed og det internationale humanistiske samarbejde (Rossotrudnichestvo).

Aftenens første punkt var Schiller Instituttets danske formand, Tom Gillesberg, der fortalte, at vi står ved et historisk øjeblik i verdenshistorien, hvor muligheden er til stede for, at USA tilslutter sig det nye paradigme med økonomisk udvikling, som nu fejer hen over verden.

Dernæst fortalte talskvinde for Russisk-Dansk Dialog, Jelena Nielsen, at en dialog mellem kulturer kan føre til fred i verden. Tom og Jelena skiftedes til at annoncere kunstnerne aftenen igennem.

Og som det tredje punkt i indledningen til aftenen bød direktør for det Russiske Center for Videnskab og Kultur, Artem Alexandrovich Markaryan (ses i billedet ovenover), velkommen til publikum.

Dernæst begyndte processionen af gave-giverne.

Fra Rusland kom børn, der spillede russiske folkemelodier på balalajkaer, ensemblet »Svetit Mesjac« (Den skinnende Måne) fra Det russiske Hus, med Igor Panich som dirigent, og som inkluderede ’Katjusha’ med barytonsolist Valerij Likhachev, der har optrådt på 200 scener. Senere fremførte han også Leperellos »Listearie« fra operaen »Don Juan« af Mozart, og Mefistofeles’ couplet fra Gounods opera »Faust« sammen med sin pianist, Semjon Bolshem.

Fra Kinas Indre Mongolia region kom en meget musikalsk ung videnskabsstuderende, Kai Guo, som spillede på mange fløjter, og Kai Guo og Feride Istogu Gillesberg fra Schiller Instituttet sang i charmerende duet, den kinesiske kærlighedssang »Kangding«.

Fra Indonesien kom en traditionel danser, Sarah Noor Komarudin, der fyldte rummet med sin yndefulde Jaipong-dans.

Fra Ghana kom to unge mænd, Isaac Kwaku og Fred Kwaku, der sang og spillede en religiøs sang og en sang, der handlede om, at, når vi arbejder sammen, er vi stærkere, end når vi står alene.

Og fra Danmark og Sverige kom tre fantastiske, kvindelige operasangere, hvis toner og dramatiske intensitet bevægede publikum dybt. Deres gaver var sange og arier af Schubert, Verdi, Dvořák og Sibelius. Gitta-Maria Sjöberg, en international, lysende sopranstjerne, der for nylig trak sig tilbage fra den Kongelige Danske Opera, sang Rusalkas »Sangen til Månen« af Dvořák. Idil Alpsoy, en fremragende mezzosopran med rødder i Ungarn og Tyrkiet, og som også er medlem af Mellemøstligt Fredsorkester, sang sange fra Sibelius’ Op. 37 og 88. Og en sopran, som vi i årenes løb har hørt blomstre og blive en virkelig brillant kunstner, Leena Malkki, sang Schuberts »Gretchen am Spinnrade« (Gretchen ved spinderokken), samt Desdemones bøn »Ave Maria«, fra Verdis opera »Othello«. De to første blev akkompagneret af Christine Raft, en særdeles talentfuld, ung dansk pianistinde, og sidstnævnte akkompagneredes af Schiller Instituttets egen Benjamin Telmányi Lylloff. Han spillede sammen med sin mor Anika en gribende Romance for violin og piano af Beethoven, og fortsatte således det eftermæle, som de har fået i arv fra deres forfader fra Ungarn, violinsolisten Emil Telmányi Lylloff.

I aftenens finale sang alle sangerne (for nær én), og med yderligere deltagelse af fire medlemmer af Schiller Instituttets fremtidige kor, det hebraiske slavekors sang »Va pensiero«, hvor slaverne længes efter frihed, fra Verdis opera »Nabucco«.

(Se program nedenfor eller på:  www.schillerinstitut.dk/si/?p=17637)

Og folk blev opløftet dels af den enkelte fremførelse, og dels af de successive musikstykker og danseoptrædener, det ene efter det andet, det ene land efter det andet, med traditionel musik i dialog med klassisk musik, der vævede en gobelin af lyd, syn og fryd, der ikke (kun) nåede sanserne, men sjælen.

Folk blev bedt om at holde kontakt med os og overveje at gå med i Schiller Instituttets kor, og nogle af dem skrev, at det ville de gerne.

Da de gik, gav de alle udtryk for den mest sublime glæde og taknemmelighed for at have fået det privilegium at modtage alle disse kostelige gaver, som de tog med sig hjem som et minde i deres sind, og som de kan åbne igen og igen.

Et musikalsk vidnesbyrd om det paradoksale mellem menneskehedens enhed og flerhed, udtrykt gennem menneskelig kreativitet, og et magtfuldt udtryk for dialogen mellem kulturer, blev proklameret.

Vi vil fortsætte med denne proklamation i form af professionelle video- og audiooptagelser, så dens ringe kan spredes i hele verden. 

Kontakt venligst Schiller Instituttet, hvis du overvejer at gå med i vores kor i København. Michelle tel.: 53 57 00 51; Feride tel.: 25 12 50 33

Koncertprogram:

Download (PDF, Unknown)

English:

The following article was published in Executive Intelligence Review, Vol. 44, No. 8, on February 24, 2017. 

Download (PDF, Unknown)

(Corrections to the above article:

The China Culture Center in Denmark is independent of the Chinese Embassy.

Picture caption and text: Chinese musician Kai Guo is from China’s Inner Mongolia region.

The correct name for Anika and Benjamin’s ancestor is Emil Telmányi.

The picture of Leena Malkki is a video grab.)

Wonderful Musical Dialogue of Culture Concert Breakthrough in Copenhagen

by Michelle Rasmussen

COPENHAGEN, Feb. 17, 2017 (EIRNS) — They came from around the world. They came bearing gifts. Not gifts you could touch with your hands. But gifts that touched your soul. Gifts of beautiful music, and beautiful dance.

And the people came to hear them. And they kept coming, and they kept coming till none of the 120 seats were left. And after there was no more room for extra chairs, they stood in the aisles, and they stood in the lobby, and they sat behind the curtains. They were Danes, and they were diplomats, and other people, from many nations, maybe 180-200 in total. The hostess said that there had never been so many there before.

The dialogue of cultures between the sponsors of the concert, itself, led to the great success – The Schiller Institute, The Russian-Danish Dialogue organization, The Russian House in Copenhagen, and the China Culture Center of the Chinese Embassy (about to open, which also provided intermission food). And the concert was held in The Russian Center for Science and Culture, representing the Russian Federal agency for the Commonwealth of the Independent states (of the former Soviet Union), compatriots living abroad, and the international humanistic cooperation (Rossotrudnichestvo).

Firstly, the people were told by Schiller Institute chairman Tom Gillesberg that we have a unique moment in world history, where the potential is there for the U.S. to join the new paradigm of economic development sweeping the world. Secondly, they were told by the spokeswoman for Russian-Danish Dialogue, Jelena Nielsen, that a dialogue of culture can lead to peace in the world. They were also the interchanging hosts for the evening. Thirdly, the director of The Russian Center for Science and Culture, Artem Alexandrovich Markaryan, welcomed the people.

Then the procession of gift-givers began.

From Russia came children playing Russian folk songs on balalaikas, (the “Svetit Mesjac” (The Moon is Shining) ensemble from The Russian House, conducted by Igor Panich), including Katjusha, with soloist Valerij Likhachev, baritone, who has sung on 200 stages. He also later performed Leperello’s list aria, from the opera Don Giovanni by Mozart, and Mephistopheles’ couplets, from Gounod’s opera Faust, together with his pianist Semjon Bolshem.

From China’s Inner Mongolia region came a very musical young science student, Kai Guo, who played many flutes, and he and Feride Istogu Gillesberg from The Schiller Institute charmingly sang the Kangding Chinese love song, as a duet.

From Indonesia came a traditional dancer, Sarah Noor Komarudin, who filled the room with her graceful Jaipong dance.

From Ghana came two young men, Isaac Kwaku and Fred Kwaku, who sang and played a religious song, and a song about when we work together, we are stronger than when we stand alone.

And from Denmark and Sweden came three outstanding female opera singers, whose tones, and dramatic intensity, moved the audience profoundly. Their offerings were songs and arias from Schubert, Verdi, Dvořák and Sibelius. Gitta-Maria Sjöberg, an international bright star of a soprano, who recently retired from The Royal Danish Opera, sang Rusalka’s Song to the Moon by Dvořák. Idil Alpsoy, a fantastic mezzo soprano with roots in Hungary and Turkey, who is also a member of the Middle East Peace Orchestra, sang songs from Sibelius’ Op.37 and 88. And a soprano, Leena Malkki, we have heard for many years blossoming into a truly magnificent artist, sang Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade (spinning wheel), and Desdemona’s prayer Ave Maria, from Verdi’s opera Othello. The first two were accompanied by Christine Raft, an extremely talented young Danish pianist, and the later by The Schiller Institute’s own Benjamin Telmányi Lylloff.

He, and his mother Anika, poignantly played Beethoven’s Romance for violin and piano, continuing the legacy bequeathed by their ancestor from Hungary, the violin soloist Emil Telmányi.

For the finale, all the singers (but one), sang Verdi’s chorus of the Hebrew slaves longing for freedom, Va, pensiero, with the addition of four members of The Schiller Institute’s future chorus. See the program at: www.schillerinstitut.dk/si/?p=17965

And the people were uplifted, with each presentation by itself, and with the succession of one piece of music, or dance, after the other, one country after another, traditional music in dialogue with classical music, weaving a tapestry of sound, sight and delight, not reaching their senses, but their soul.

And the people were asked to be in contact with us, and to consider joining The Schiller Institute’s chorus, some of whom wrote that they would.

As they left, they all expressed the most sublime joy and thankfulness for having had the privilege to have received all of these precious gifts, which they took home in the memory of their minds, to be opened again, and again.

A musical testament to the paradox of the unity and diversity of mankind, expressed by human creativity, and a powerful statement of the dialogue of cultures was declaimed.

We will go forth with this statement, in the form of professional video and audio recordings, to spread its ripples throughout the world.

(Hopefully ready this week.)

I en tid, hvor der er alt for meget politisk splid i verden, og verdens lande i stedet burde arbejde sammen om menneskehedens fælles mål, er det ekstra vigtigt, at vi på alle måder bygger bro mellem verdens nationer og de mange forskelligartede kulturer. Når vi oplever det skønne i andre kulturer, skaber det gensidig forståelse og et grundlag for samarbejde og fred. Klassisk kunst er derfor en vigtig nøgle til en sådan dialog mellem kulturer, og det er grunden til, at vi afholder denne koncert!

Fredag den 17. februar, 2017, kl.19.

Gratis adgang.

Sted: Russisk Center for Videnskab og Kultur, Vester Voldgade 11, København.

Kinesiske forfriskninger i pausen.

Invitér også din familie, venner og kollegaer, og hæng gerne plakaten op forskellige steder.

Information: 25 12 50 33 

Program

Download (PDF, Unknown)

24. november, 2016 – Glædelig Thanksgiving Fra LaRouchePAC. Mens vi fejrer denne, den mest amerikanske helligdag, har vi ønsket at give jer en gave til at klare hjernen og være med til at forme vejen fremad. Som I ved, så anser vi de seneste valgrystelser i hele verden som et signal til fødslen af en potentielt dybtgående, ny, menneskelig æra i menneskehedens historie – som afviser det patentmiddel, som har været evindelige krige, Malthus-økonomi og brutalt folkemord mod både nationale og udenlandske befolkninger, og som har karakteriseret arven efter Obama og Bush. Koblet til det dristige, økonomiske og videnskabelige udviklingsperspektiv, som Kina har foreslået, er der et reelt potentiale for stor og vidunderlig forandring.

Den 18. januar 2014, nøjagtig 50 år efter dagen, hvor Mozarts Rekviem blev opført, blot få måneder efter mordet på præsident John F. Kennedy, i Holy Cross katedralen i Boston, Massachusetts, mindedes medlemmer af LaRouches politiske bevægelse dagen med en opførelse af Mozarts Rekviem i samme katedral. Messen blev indledt med udvalgte citater fra John F. Kennedy, der udfordrede den amerikanske befolkning til at realisere sin sande, menneskelige natur gennem at bygge store, økonomiske udviklingsprojekter og kolonisere rummet.

Vi håber, I finder tid til at lytte til denne opførelse i løbet af helligdagen og dele oplevelsen med jeres venner. Ligesom mordet på Kennedy for vores befolkning markerede en nedstigen til de helvedesagtige vilkår, der har karakteriseret vores umiddelbare fortid, således vil, hvis vi omfavner den mentale tilstand, som både selve Mozarts messe og de intellektuelle udfordringer stillet af vores tidligere præsident, fremkalder, en langt bedre fremtid vise sig inden for vores rækkevidde, lige over horisonten.