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CGTN’s Yang Rui Interviews Helga Zepp-LaRouche & Bill Jones on His ‘Dialogue’ Broadcast

June 16, 2019by Jason Ross in Helga media coverage or interview, Media coverage of our activity, New Silk Road / BRI updates, World war danger updates

CGTN anchor Yang Rui interviewed Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Bill Jones during their recent China trip, which was aired on June 13 for the “Yang Rui Dialogue” program, headlined “BRI Incentives and Risk Assessment.” A transcript is provided below.

Transcript

YANG RUI:  The Belt and Road Initiative has been thrust into the media limelight for several years.  With more and more countries onboard now, China will not be the party that dictates where the cooperation is heading.  For all parties’ common interests, China will inevitably undergo a range of policy adjustments along the way, to ensure the Initiative delivers win-win results that are long-lasting and sustainable.  But, what is behind some of the criticisms against the Initiative, and what can the BRI us?  Unilateralism undermines world economic patterns.  To discuss this issue and more, I’m happy to be joined in the studio by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and President of the Schiller Institute, and Bill Jones, Washington bureau chief of Executive Intelligence Review.

That’s our topic. This is “Dialogue.”  I’m Wang Rui.

Welcome to our show.  Do you think the rest of the world has developed a better understanding about the Belt and Road Initiative after so many years of debates, discussions and media fanfare since 2013?

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Well, I would think that the people of Asia, for sure.  I just attended the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations, and the reaction to Xi Jinping’s speech was really extraordinary, because people realized that they are participating in the evolution of a completely new system of international relations, which is overcoming geopolitics.  I think people are sick and tired of confrontation and war as a way of solving problems, and they appreciate very much that every conflict on the planet can be solved through dialogue.  So, I think this is very well understood in Asia, in Africa, even some of the Europeans are becoming very enthusiastic.  As matter of fact 22 of 28 EU nations are already cooperating.  So I think the rest will be a question of time.

YANG :  But it seems the top concern of the EU about the BRI has been the issue of transparency.  Bill, what do you make of their concerns?

WILLIAM JONES:  I think a lot of it is a tempest in a teapot.  The Belt and Road Initiative has been transparent to the people who are receiving the investment, who are benefitting from it.  There is also an issue that people can see what’s happening on the ground, with the improvement of the general conditions of life of the people who are recipients of the Belt and Road Initiative.  The reason that there’s this objective is, however, that people are concerned, on the one hand, that it has been a Chinese initiative, not an initiative taken by the European Union.  It is also breaking with the policies of the EU and of the West generally, of demanding conditionalities for any investment that’s made in places like Africa, India, and Asia. China has been intent on building infrastructure:  They don’t demand certain conditions which are not necessary, and they’re not concerned about the different political systems that exist in those countries:  The goal is to improve the lives of the people, and people can see that on the ground.  And the objections that are raised to the so-called “transparency” issues, I think are just an attempt to stop the momentum that has been created.

YANG :  Helga, it seems, some of the member states of the European Union are starting to break the silence, by standing up to the BRI memorandum, such as Italy, which indeed surprised their American friends.  Do you think what Italy has done, is likely to trigger a similar domino reactions that the British authorities had done before the rest of the European Union had followed suit, regarding the AIIB?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think the Italian memorandum of understanding with China can be the model for the relations of all European countries with China, not only in the bilateral agreement, but to have a joint mission, for example, to develop the continent of Africa.  Africa will have 2.5 billion by the year 2050, and either the Europeans join hands with China and other nations to industrialize the African continent, or you will have the biggest refugee crisis ever in history.  And the Italian government, especially Prime Minister [Giuseppe] Conte has already advocated that Italy intends to take the lead to bring the Europeans into cooperation with the Belt and Road Initiative. And the good thing is that, contrary to what some people think, Conte also has a good relationship with President Trump.

So I think the strategic question, number one, is how do we get development among many nations in the world, but finally, the United States must be brought into the Belt and Road Initiative, because if you don’t do that, there is the danger of the Thucydides Trap.  But I think the Italian government is play a very constructive role in all of these questions.

YANG : Secretary Pompeo has been selling the idea, wherever he goes, that China will be a threat.  Why are we so bad?

Now, when we look at, say, our investment in the infrastructure building in Africa, it seems to amount to a project, a mega one, of industrialization, a massive project of industrialization.  What about the consequences arising from, for example, the trade war that is just started between the United States and China?  What do you think of the impact of this trade dispute between Washington and Beijing upon Africa, and our business presence there?

JONES: It’ll be absolutely disastrous, because it will hinder, it will place an obstacle in the free development of the Belt and Road Initiative; it’ll raise suspicions that really have no basis whatsoever.  And it’s disastrous for the United States, itself: President Trump is not going to be able to create a strong economy in the United States through trade embargoes or trade tariffs.  He has to invest in infrastructure, he has to invest in science and technology.  And there are certain attempts to do that now, over the last couple of weeks, in terms of the space program in the United States and the attempt to have a discussion with the Democrats over infrastructure.  But if he doesn’t bring down these tariffs, if he doesn’t create a good relationship with China, this is not going to work.

China, in fact, can help in building infrastructure:  They could invest in an infrastructure bank in the United States with much of the money that is now held in Treasury bills, in order to build high-speed rail in the United States.  The U.S. economy is going down, not because of trade, and not because of China, but because of a failure of governments over decades, in investing in industry and technology.

YANG: The idea of a China threat covers many things, such as ideology.  Well, many say that the Cold War is making a comeback. So, does it mean, Helga, that many African countries have to take sides?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  The Chinese model is very attractive to the Africa countries, because it shows a way of how to overcome poverty, the miracle which China has undergone in the last 40 years is admired by many Africans, and they are now demanding to be treated more equally by the Europeans.  They don’t want to hear Sunday sermons and words about human rights and good governance, and no investment.  They demand from the Europeans, direct investment and not development aid which disappears into the pockets of the NGOs.

So, I think we are in a period of transformation, where either the West finds its way back to better traditions, like the humanist periods of the Classical period of 200 years ago, where there was actually a much larger affinity between the moral values of the European classics and China.  For example, if you look at the similarity between Confucius and Friedrich Schiller, after whom the Schiller institute is named, they have the same idea of the moral improvement of the population.  Confucius talks about the aesthetical education of man; Xi Jinping has put a lot of emphasis recently on the aesthetic education of the students, because the goal of this is the beauty of the mind, and this is the ideal which used to be the case for Europe, and for the early American republic!  The problem with the West is that, as you can see in the United States, they have turned away to a very large degree, from the ideas of their early historical period.  But they’re going down: The West is in a moral collapse, the economy is far from being in such a great shape as they say, and the statistics would say.  So it’s really a question for the West to change.

And I think there are many countries, you mentioned some in Europe already, which absolutely are willing to find a new model. I think it’s not so much a question of choosing; I think we are witnessing the creation of new paradigm of international relations, where the best of all countries and traditions must come into it.

YANG: Increasingly, there’s no question that much of the strength that China can project into a continent like Africa would largely depend on the construction of “soft power.” What do you know about Confucius schools in Africa?  Why do you think the United States considered things we teach Confucius schools in the United States a threat, whilst it seems these schools are very popular in the African continent?

JONES:  Well, you see in the United States, there is a group of people, some of whom are in the Trump Administration of a neoconservative bent, who have never come to terms with the fact that China will become a major industrial power.  And they have initiated a major campaign similar to what was done during the McCarthy era, to blacken China’s name on all levels — in the area of economy, in the area of culture, in the area of social governance.  And so you have this situation where major scholars, who are most knowledgeable about the United States are now being restricted from coming to the United States!  And this is a very serious thing, because, it’s not only that we agree to disagree, but we must also find the common interests:  We’re all on the same globe, we have major problems that we have to resolve, not least of which is population alleviation not only in China, but population alleviation in the world.  And we need population alleviation in the United States:  We haven’t talked about that for 40 years.  That should be on the agenda.  And China’s initiative, to try to educate Americans about the ideas of Confucius and to learn the Chinese language, which is a basic element in learning another culture is learning their language, the Confucius Institutes have been very important in providing a means of learning the Chinese language.  Chinese right now, still, is one of the most important second languages in which schoolchildren are trying to learn, because they realize this is going to become the most important language.

YANG:  Language learning is fast becoming an instrument in building interconnectivity, a very critical idea for our understanding of the BRI.  During the Cold War, the former Soviet Union was accused of spreading its ideology of communism.  Today, one major factor that has prevented United States from undertaking an all-out Cold War against China, the rising power, is that China is not as aggressive as the Soviet ideology:  We want to build a community of shared future.

So, do you think what the United States is concerned with, holds any water?  Where do you stand about the issue of ideology, of course, in the context of how to build a soft power, and the establishment of Confucius Institutes?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think that what China is doing is a moral model of improving the livelihood for people, but also demanding that the people improve.  Xi Jinping has talked about the role of the artists, that they have to uphold the morality of the population.  I think that one of the reasons why certain geopolitical factions in the West are so negative, is because the liberal system has reached a point of degeneration, where everything is allowed, every perversion, every new pornography, every new violence, the entertainment “industry” in the West has really become terrible!  And I think that the people who are making their profit with these kinds of things, they don’t like the idea that somebody says, you should be morally a better person.

But I think we have reached a point in history, where, you know, we are at the end of an epoch.  I don’t think that the changes we are experiencing are just the Chinese model versus the liberal model.  But I think that we are experiencing a change as big, or bigger than the difference between the Middle Ages in Europe and modern times, which will mean completely different axioms.  And I think what Xi Jinping discusses in terms of the “shared community for the one future of humanity” it is really the idea of how you can put the interest of the one mankind ahead of any national interest.  So, I think the way to look at the present situation is, where do we want to be in a 100 years from now?  We will have fusion power.  We will have the ability to have limitless energy; we can create new raw materials out of waste by separation of the isotopes.  We will have space travel. We will have villages on the Moon.

So, I think that at that time, humanity has to be one, or else we will not exist!  Take the recent imaging of the black hole:  This was only possible — first of all, it proved the general relativity theory of Einstein, which is a wonderful thing all by itself, because it will mean new breakthroughs in science, at all levels.  But, this was only possible, because you had eight radio telescopes at different points in the world, in Spain, in Chile, in the United States, in the Antarctic, which together could make this image!  You could not have done such a proof of a physical principle of the universe by only one country alone.   And I think that that particular incident of imaging the black hole, gives you a taste of the kind of cooperation mankind will have in the future.  And the key question is, do we get enough people to understand that in time, to make this jump?

YANG:  Thank you so much.  You’re watching “Dialogue,” with Mme. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and President of the Schiller Institute, and Bill Jones, Washington bureau chief of Executive Intelligence Review.

Welcome back:  The BRI would not only cover the Sub-Sahara region.  Most countries in the South — I’m talking about South-South cooperation — would benefit from infrastructure building.  Let’s do a case study:  Hambatota Port in Sri Lanka has caused many debates as to whether China has developed a conspiracy theory, whether the Western media concerns about the “debt trap” would hold any water?  I would like to have your thoughts very quickly.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  I think this is turning the truth upside down.  Because if you look, why is Africa underdeveloped?  Five hundred years of colonialism, and then about 70 years of IMF conditionalities.  If you look at the 17 poorest countries in Africa, which are in danger of defaulting, only in 3 of them is China involved, but all the rest are indebted to the Paris Club. So the debt trap was created by the IMF before, and China is actually giving many grants and —

YANG:  Do you agree, Bill?

JONES:  I do agree with that.  I think we’ve seen the debt situation spin out of control, long before the BRI.  We have needed international financial reform that we have been talking about, that Helga’s husband, Lyndon LaRouche has pointed out for decades, prior to his recent death, of trying to change the financial system, in order to create credits for infrastructure, instead of credit for repayment of old debt.  These countries in Africa have been saddled with debt by the IMF, not by China.  As a matter of fact, most of the countries that are in the biggest danger of their debt being a problem, are those which are not involved in the BRI — countries in Africa.  And therefore, what has to be done, is really a reform of the international financial system, in order to perhaps even write off some of this debt, and to insist, as we go forward, that any debt that’s given out will go to increase the physical production capabilities of these countries, because if it does that, then it’s debt that’s going to be repaid.  But if it goes to repay old debt, or if it’s the casino society that we’ve known over the last 20 years, it’s going to become a bubble, and we’ve got to change the way we do business in that respect.

YANG:  What about financing vehicles, Bill?  Is that a major issue for the beneficiary countries?

JONES:  What we actually need is the creation of something like an infrastructure bank in the United States, which would allow China to help invest in infrastructure there.  Foreign direct investment by China now becomes something of a problem, because of the atmosphere that has been created by the neo-cons; but otherwise, China could help with this.  China has a different orientation toward finance. Chinese finances to the Belt and Road go to transportation infrastructure.  It brings the countries together, it creates a greater production capacities, and it has become, I think, a template for how a functioning, how a healthy financial system has to operate.  We’ve got to get away from what used to be called the “bankers’ arithmetic,” in which money chased after more money.  The money has got to be used to finance physical economy, and then it becomes a means of growth for the population, and is no problem in terms of repayment, because the population becomes richer.

YANG:  I wonder if you have followed very closely the development between Malaysia and China, on the construction of the east coast railway link, that has a lot to do with how we do risk assessment, political and legal; and this helps us go back to one of the earlier questions on the issue of transparency.  So do you think this poses a serious challenge to the prospects of the BRI in developing countries, some of which are young democracies, according to Western standards?

JONES:  Well, I think a lot of this is a matter of a learning curve that the BRI has been through over the last five years.  The Malaysia situation was unfortunate, but it has largely been resolved, and it’s been resolved because China has been very flexible in dealing with the countries on the BRI, and I think they have a clear indication, a clear orientation for improving the situation in the countries in which they are involved.  And if problems arise, or if discrepancies occur, I think they have shown a willingness to diplomatically resolve the problem to the benefit of the countries that are involved.  And they have to do that.

Look, a lot of mistakes were made by the Western countries in terms of initial attempts to industrialize Africa, and as a result of that, they left.  They left Africa in the dust.  China is there, there may be some mistakes in individual cases, but China learns the lessons and does not leave, and this is the important thing:  Because the fortitude of continuing with the project, which is the most important project for mankind today is absolutely necessary, and I think the Chinese government has shown the fortitude necessary to move forward on this.

So, yes, problems may occur.  They have occurred in the past.  They have been resolved, and I think they will be resolved in the future, if they would occur again.

YANG: The last two remaining questions will be about, first of all, the alleged westward expansion of the BRI through the Eurasian continent.  The other, of course, is the Maritime Silk Road: Do you think this idea of a Maritime Silk Road, Helga, will help ease tensions further between China and other countries that have competing claims on the maritime stakes in southeast Asia?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  I think the combined concept of the BRI and the Maritime Silk Road is really a program for the reconstruction of the world economy.  And in the beginning, people said, “this this railway from east or west or north or south, more beneficial for China or for Russia?”  And I kept saying, “don’t worry about it, take it a couple of years from now and all of these networks will grow into one.”  This is why we published this report “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge.” Because, if you look at it from the standpoint of the evolution of mankind, it is very natural that eventually the infrastructure will reach all continents, will open up all interiors, will connect the maritime connections.  And for example, Portugal and Spain and Greece and Italy, these are countries that want to be not only the hub for the Eurasian Land-Bridge on the land line, but they also want to be hubs for the maritime connection, connecting to all the Portuguese-speaking, Spanish-speaking countries.  So, I think this will also grow into a World Land-Bridge connection.

YANG:  Bill, what do you think of the connection, between China’s BRI and President Putin’s vision for the Eurasian Economic Union?

JONES:  I think they will tend to converge, not on all points, but in the basic orientation, because what President Putin wants to do, is to take those countries which have been traditionally associated with Russia and create some kind of common economic entity.  But, the Belt and Road is providing the investment for all of these countries, including Russia, which benefits tremendously from it.  And therefore, there is a means of really bringing together the two most important countries in Eurasia around a common goal of developing infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, and improving the conditions of life in all these countries.  So I think there is this convergence going on that will become greater with time.

YANG:  I’ll see you next time.  Good-bye.

 

Schiller Institute Celebrates 30th Anniversary!

March 24, 2014by tobi in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche

This new 36 page booklet about the Schiller Institute movement provides the history of our three decades long fight against the prevailing trend toward cultural and political barbarism, and it  will help you organize others to participate in creating the urgently needed Paradigm Shift. We can and must pull mankind from the abyss and make a new Golden Renaissance!

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In Memoriam: The Triumph of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

June 10, 2019by Jason Ross in Helga Zepp-LaRouche, New York City SI activity, Our conferences

A memorial event celebrating the life and legacy of American statesman, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. was held in Manhattan, June 8th, 2019 with simultaneous satellite events watching across the country. See the full program below.

PDF of the program

Introduction – Dennis Speed

Prologue – Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Lyndon LaRouche in His Own Words
Dennis Speed, narrator

Hall Johnson (arr.): “When I Was Sinkin’ Down”

Hall Johnson (arr.): “I Don’t Feel No-Ways Tired”
Reginald Bouknight, tenor soloist
Schiller Institute Festival Chorus
Diane Sare, director

J.S. Bach: “Jesu, meine Freude,” BWV 227
Schiller Institute Festival Chorus
Andrés Vera, violoncello
Bruce Director, contrabass
John Sigerson, director

INTERMISSION

The Third Trial of Socrates
Dennis Speed, narrator

Roland Hayes: “They Led My Lord Away”
Elvira Green, alto

Roland Hayes: “Crucifixion”
Frank Mathis, baritone

Johannes Brahms: “Dem dunkeln Schoß der heil’gen Erde”
Schiller Institute Festival Chorus
John Sigerson, director

Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata for Violonello and Piano, Op. 69
I. Allegro ma non tanto
II. Scherzo
III. Adagio cantabile
IV. Allegro vivace
Andrés Vera, violoncello
My-Hoa Steger, piano

Ludwig van Beethoven: “Adelaide,” Op. 46
John Sigerson, tenor
Margaret Greenspan, piano

Johannes Brahms: “Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer,” Op. 105, No. 4
Elvira Green, alto
My-Hoa Steger, piano

The Triumph of Lyndon LaRouche
Dennis Speed, narrator

Epilogue

Robert Schumann:
“Mit Myrthen und Rosen”, Op. 24, No. 9
John Sigerson, tenor
Margaret Greenspan, piano

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: “Ave verum corpus,” K. 618
To be sung by everyone

J.S. Bach: Chorale
“Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden” from St. Matthew Passion
Schiller Institute Festival Chorus

“Taps” for Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Concert in Memory of JFK: Immortality in the Presidency

February 1, 2014by tobi in Cultural renaissance updates, New York City SI activity, Our musical events tagged , , ,

This article appeared in the January 24, 2014 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. We post it here with the permission of the publisher.

By Dennis Speed

I was Twenty-three years old at the turn of the century. It was a time of brave expectations. Many believed that a new epoch was at hand—that the dawn of the twentieth century would prove to be a turning point in the affairs of men. They cited recent scientific advances and predicted a future of great social progress. The era, they said, was approaching when poverty and hunger would at last disappear. In the way people make fervent resolutions at the start of a new year, the world seemed to be resolving at the start of a new century to undergo a change for the better. Who then foresaw that the coming decades would bring the unimaginable horrors of two world wars, concentration camps, and atomic bombs?

Pablo Casals,
Joys And Sorrows

Those capable of foresight—and for civilization to survive, the American population must become so capable—will recognize the truth in Casals’ observation. Yet, it is our duty to shape the future, and thus to know it. To paraphrase another slain U.S. President: We are now engaged in a 150 years war, testing whether any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, as is the United States, can long endure. Assassinations against American Presidents, have been the preferred criminal method of choice, for dealing with the problem of the American Cultural Exception. So it was with John Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Dr. Martin Luther King.

To respond to the challenge of reproducing and increasing the power of foresight for civilization’s survival in the short and long term is the unique mission of the Schiller Institute, a mission which the Institute brought to the City of Boston on Sunday, Jan. 19. The Schiller Institute Chorus, augmented by additional singers and an orchestra largely comprised of volunteers from the New England Conservatory of Music, presented Mozart’s Requiem in its entirety to an audience of 1,200 at Boston’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross, performed exactly 50 years to the day, of a 1964 Solemn High Requiem Mass specially requested by the Kennedy family.

One year after his October 1962 defiance of that faction of “principalities and powers,” including Britain’s Lord Bertrand Russell, that dared to believe that nuclear war against the Soviet Union was not only conceivable, but winnable (the Cuban Missile crisis), John Kennedy was murdered in Dallas. His assassination, along with that of his brother Robert, and of Martin Luther King, has hung “like a dead hand upon the brain of the living,” until now. Four generations have been unable to shake off their effects. That is because there is only one reliable method for doing so: People must be elevated above and beyond their own pre-selected, limiting self-expectation. People require, not “the facts” of “what really happened,” but the fire of insight needed to reverse our unending national trauma. No preaching, slogans, or imprecations will cause a terrorized people to have courage. Only their own voices, heard as through the mirror of a great artistic performance, can move the despairing to a higher place, a mountaintop where their souls, much to their surprise, actually live.

Conductor and Schiller Institute Music Director John Sigerson, in an interview with a reporter from The Pilot, newspaper of the Boston diocese, was asked whether the Schiller Institute believes that “Classical music can create a change in our culture.” Sigerson’s answer to this was “No.” Rather, he asserted, it was the juxtaposition of the “musical” with the “non-musical,” in this case several excerpts of speeches by JFK, heard at precisely selected points in the Requiem, that would allow members of the audience to be provoked to change their minds, and thus hear the music. Sigerson said: “The JFK speeches alone wouldn’t work, and the music alone wouldn’t work. It’s the uncomfortable juxtaposition of the two that works,” this by creating an unexpected cognitive discomfort and tension for the audience.

The Schiller Institute has employed for the second time—the first being in Vienna, Va., on Nov. 22, the 50th anniversary of the President’s assassination—the spiritual and therapeutic power of the MozartRequiem to restore the power of cognition to Americans. As Schiller Institute Founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche said in her remarks, such a Classical revival is necessary to inspire Americans to take up Kennedy’s mission again, even as the world currently stands at the edge of thermonuclear war.

The Preparation of the Audience

Master of Ceremonies Matthew Ogden provided a prelude to the music, using a selection of speakers, messages, and quotations to allow everyone in the audience equal access to the depth of meaning contained in the moments they were about to experience, “not in time, but in the Idea,” as Nicholas of Cusa says. For those two and one-half hours, the “virtual reality” brainwashing that accounts for the toleration of a Nietzschean “all is permissible” popular “culture” was interrupted. Those who might have objected that “it’s too long for the audience to concentrate” were once again proven wrong. It was essential that they be prepared to listen, and not merely hear, the Mozart composition. But why?

In the words of the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, “As far as music is concerned, there is nothing about which the so-called ‘public’ knows less than about its own mind. Above all, there is one prior condition needful to the listener—whether as an individual or as an audience—if he is to formulate a judgment of real value: and that is, he must have enough time.” This essential pre-condition having been met before a single note was sung, the audience was thus pre-organized to respond at a higher level than it would otherwise have been capable, even with the best musical performance.

There was more to the audience preparation, however. This audience was assembled through a thorough, consistent political intervention and fight. This audience recruitment was the result of an intense organizing effort conducted over about six weeks or so. There was a successful “outreach” campaign throughout the Boston metropolitan area. One portion of the audience had come because of ads in theBoston Globe and other news outlets. The Pilot was cited by many as their source of news. Several Boston schools and colleges were represented, along with senior centers and various community organizations. Leaflets and posters were distributed in Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, Portuguese, English, and French. Several foreign consulates attended the concert, as well as state representatives from Maine and Rhode Island. There were messages from Michael D. Higgins, President of the Republic of Ireland; Boston City Councilman Steven Murphy; and from Nicholas Di Virgilio, tenor, the only surviving soloist from the 1964 concert (see below for his remarks).

Many who attended recalled having been at the 1964 performance: it must be remembered that for the then-largely Catholic Boston, Holy Cross was their local church. Ray Flynn, former Boston Mayor, and later, Ambassador to the Vatican, who had also attended the 1964 performance, expressed the sense of gratitude and true happiness that the citizens of Boston felt for the thoughtfulness that went into ensuring that the historic nature of the occasion did not go unrecognized (see box).

The Performance, and the ‘Pitch’

The Schiller Institute Chorus, soloists Ron Williams (baritone), William Ferguson (tenor), Heather Gallagher (mezzo-soprano) and Nataly Wickham (soprano), and the largely New England Conservatory of Music-based freelance orchestra constituted for Sunday’s performance, accomplished its primary task: to present the Mozart Requiem as a single, unified Idea. The unity of effect of the performance allowed the words of President Kennedy, the which worked to punctuate and underscore Mozart’s presentation of the idea of immortality, to pose a dialogue about the nature of immortality’s triumph over death with each audience member, as well as the audience as a whole. Maestro Sigerson also noted that the performances of the “Recordare” and “Benedictus” sections of the piece, both set for vocal quartet, were “of a piece” with the entirety, and were delivered with the exact meaning that Mozart intended them to convey.

The performance was conducted at a tuning of A=432, nearly a quarter tone lower than most modern performances, and is a standard feature of Schiller Institute musical practice. While this is sometimes referred to as the “lower” tuning, that designation is imprecise. It is the propertuning; it is merely “lower” than what is currently practiced as the wrong, “higher” tuning. The tuning range for music is perhaps more clearly stated as middle C=256 cycles per second, which yields an A=427-432. The C=256 is the tuning at which the Mozart Requiem was composed, designed, and intended to be heard.

The next day, The Boston Music Intelligencer, self-described as a “virtual journal and essential blog of the classical music scene in greater Boston,” ran an extensive positive review under the headline, “JFK Remembered in Musical Tribute,” characterizing it as “a polished traditional performance.”

One of the supporters of the Schiller Institute, conductor Anthony Morss, who has worked with, and conducted experiments demonstrating the reasons for insisting on what is also referred to as, “the Verdi pitch,” supplied an essay that appeared in the concert program intended to provide some background on the matter (see below).

Art as Necessity

The necessity of art—not only its moral, but physical necessity—was stressed in the brief and precise remarks directed to the audience by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

“It is necessary to commemorate the celebration of Mozart’s Requiemwhich was performed for John F. Kennedy, 50 years ago in this cathedral. It is urgent to evoke again the divine spirit of beauty of Mozart’s composition in order to reconnect us with the better world which both Kennedy and Mozart represent,” she said. Zepp-LaRouche insisted, along with the “Poet of Freedom” Friedrich Schiller, after whom the Institute, which celebrates its 30th year in 2014, was named and founded by her, that death is swallowed up in the victory of the power of musical immortality as Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven exemplify, and as the power of the Kennedy Apollo Project also demonstrates. Kennedy’s optimism allowed every American, and, with the successful landing of the human species on the moon, everyone on the planet, to know, by demonstration, that the mind, though contained in a body, is not that body; the mind has no physical limits (see box).

Zepp-LaRouche’s reference to “reconnection to a better world” highlighted the inevitable and necessary Ideas that were not merely evoked, but provoked, by the performance. And, it must needs be so: Kennedy’s appreciation for and promotion of the Classical arts and of Classical artists was at the very foundation of his Presidency, though this has been largely ignored in these intervening years. Who, for example, would even today recognize these as the words of JFK, given on the occasion of a commemoration of the poet Robert Frost at Amherst College, October 26, 1963, less than a month before his death?

“Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost…. it is hardly an accident that Robert Frost coupled poetry and power, for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.”

Now, and Then

There were some key differences between the 1964 and 2014 performances. In 1964, it was an astonishing step to include the Mozart Requiem in the context of the Catholic Solemn High Requiem Mass ceremony—the first time that that had ever been done in the United States.

There was another important difference. In the case of this performance-commemoration, 50 years of erosion of the thinking capacities of the American people, particularly by means of the cacophonous obscenity known as “popular entertainment”—including in the form of the post-2000 American Presidencies—required a uniquely insightful rendering of the music by the performers.

It is essential to note, that the chorus was composed of non-professional Schiller Institute singers, many of whom are involved in daily organizing work with both Helga and Lyndon LaRouche. Initially, many Boston-based semi-professional and professional singers had volunteered to be part of the performance, but withdrew because of a campaign denouncing the Schiller Institute, carried out by certain local members of the Democratic Party to intimidate singers. Some refused to listen, and thus “qualified” themselves to participate. Importantly, not only did the local organizers of the event, composed primarily of former members of the LaRouche Youth Movement who were assisted by an experienced and older group of LaRouche Political Action Committee organizers, not attempt to conceal in any way “who they were.” In fact, the organizers insisted that everyone they speak with fully understandwhy it was that only the Schiller Institute, and Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, out of everyone in the United States, had insisted that this 50th anniversary commemoration take place.

To answer that question, we pose a seemingly unrelated question, actually identical to the first.

Why was Kennedy, despite his flaws, seen as exceptional by people who were often critical (and sometimes pitiless) judges of human character, such as Charles de Gaulle, Douglas MacArthur, and Eleanor Roosevelt? Posed another way: Why did Kennedy embody for these severe critics of human character, as well as for many “normal Americans,” an efficient deployment of the U.S. Presidency on behalf of furthering the progress, not merely of the United States, but of mankind?

The answer to this is posed as follows.

A statement from his Jan. 20, 1961 Inaugural Address, differentiated Kennedy then, and differentiates Kennedy now, from all the Presidents who have served after him: After listing all of the tasks his Administration will aspire to accomplish, including “a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself,” Kennedy observed:

“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

Kennedy forecasted his “willed fate” truthfully, and acted accordingly. Despite all the things he did not live to accomplish, in that thousand days, Kennedy managed to save the world from nuclear destruction, and send to, and put the human race on the Moon. The capacity to access the revolutionary principle embedded in the American Constitution and its Declaration of Independence, on which the Lincoln and Kennedy Administrations built their respective commitments and contributions to American progress, has simply not emanated from the Presidency as the guiding policy outlook of any U.S. Administration since Kennedy’s assassination.

In fact, today, the opposite commitment now exists, in the form of the Obama Administration, and the predecessor Bush Administration, and must be reversed by an American people made culturally competent to do so.

That is the reason that the Schiller Institute was uniquely qualified to propose, organize, and perform the Nov. 22 and Jan. 19 Kennedy remembrances. We refuse to submit to voluntary amnesia. There is a connection between courage and intelligence. Kennedy lived up to his own studies of courage under adversity. None of us can do less.

The Schiller Institute Presents: A Tribute to John F. Kennedy — W.A. MOZART · REQUIEM

December 19, 2013by tobi in Boston SI activity, Cultural renaissance updates, Our musical events

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On January 19, 1964, Boston Honored Her Fallen Son John Fitzgerald Kennedy With A Performance of Mozart’s Requiem at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross

Join Us, Exactly 50 Years Later, In A Commemorative Performance.

SUNDAY, JAN. 19, 2014
3:00 PM

CATHEDRAL OF THE HOLY CROSS
1400 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02118

Admission is free. First come, first seated.

“From the past, man obtains the insights, wisdom and hope to face with confidence the uncertainties of the future.”

– John F. Kennedy’s remarks to the centennial of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1963, three days before his death

It is fitting that 50 years later we commemorate the spirit of cultural and economic progress that John F. Kennedy’s leadership represented for America and the world. With this spirit, President Kennedy confronted and sought to overcome the terrifying prospects of global war, poverty, and human degradation that faced our nation and the world during his time. In the intervening years, these existential problems have come to threaten mankind in even greater magnitude, but the national mind that had joyfully embraced the challenge to conquer the Moon, has been supplanted by a spirit that belittles the sacredness of the human individual and the power of human creativity.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem is a most fitting tribute to John F. Kennedy, as Mozart’s work communicates the same optimism and belief in man’s infinite progress to which President Kennedy dedicated his life. The spark of optimism which marked the Kennedy era, though dimmed, is still present among us because it is embedded in the very fabric of our nation from its founding.

Let us honor the memory of John Kennedy by not only reflecting on what was, and what could have been, but on how our culture has changed, and how we must now recommit ourselves to its renewal.

The concert will be performed by the Schiller Institute Chorus along with an orchestra and soloists assembled for the occasion by the Schiller Institute. The performance will be at the natural “Verdi tuning” of A=432 Hz.

The Schiller Institute was founded in 1984 on the initiative of Helga Zepp-LaRouche, wife of the American statesman and physical economist Lyndon LaRouche, for the purpose of reviving the paradigm of Classical culture and reasserting the right of all humanity to material, moral, and intellectual progress. It is named after Friedrich Schiller, the “Poet of Freedom” whose ”Ode to Joy” is immortalized by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony.

 

Schiller Institute To Present Mozart Requiem in Remembrance of President John F. Kennedy

October 22, 2013by tobi in Music updates, Northern Virginia SI activity, Our musical events

Concert page now published here!

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The Schiller Institute announced today that it will present “A Remembrance of President John F. Kennedy and Recommitment to the Principles of His Presidency, Featuring a Performance of W.A. Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, K. 626” on Friday, November 22, 8:00 p.m., at St. Mark Catholic Church in Vienna, Virginia.

The concert will be performed by the Schiller Institute Chorus along with an orchestra and soloists assembled for the occasion by the Schiller Institute. The performance will be at the natural “Verdi tuning” of A=432 Hz, in keeping with the Schiller Institute’s decades-long campaign to return to the tuning which has been demonstrated to maximize the beauty of the singing voice and of fine musical instruments.

Admission is free: first come, first seated. More information can be obtained at: requiemconcert@schillerinstitute.org, or (703) 771-8390. For directions to St. Mark Catholic Church, see http://www.stmark.org/directions/.

In its flyer for the concert, the Schiller Institute elaborates on why it is holding this event at this time.

“From the past, man obtains the insights, wisdom and hope to face with confidence the uncertainties of the future.”
—President John F. Kennedy’s remarks to the centennial of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, November 19, 1963—three days before his death

President John F. KennedyNovember 22, 2013, will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It is fitting on that solemn occasion to commemorate the spirit of cultural and economic progress with which Kennedy confronted, and sought to overcome, the terrifying prospects of global war, poverty, and human degradation that faced our nation and the world during his time. In the intervening years, these existential problems have come to threaten mankind in even greater magnitude, yet our national spirit of progress has been replaced with cultural pessimism and indifference. The great economic, scientific, and cultural projects begun then have long ago been dismantled, and their memory buried and all but forgotten. The national mind that joyfully embraced the challenge to conquer the Moon has been supplanted by a spirit that belittles the power of human creativity and accepts the inevitability of economic decline.

Therefore, to properly honor the memory of John Kennedy, not only must we reflect on what was, and what could have been, but on how our culture has changed, so that we can recommit ourselves to its revival. The spark of optimism which marked the Kennedy era, though dimmed, is still present among us, because it is embedded in the very fabric of our nation from its founding, having its roots in the great Renaissance thinker Nicholas of Cusa, in such works as his Concordantia Catholicaand De Docta Ignorantia.

Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem is a most fitting tribute to Kennedy. It expresses Mozart’s passion for the concept of Man which he saw, in his time, as forming the basis for the establishment of the American republic, that Kennedy would come to promote and defend, and because the young genius Mozart pitted his creations directly against the same regressive social forces which arranged the assassinations of the President, his brother, and Martin Luther King.

An honest performance of Mozart’s work communicates the same optimism and belief in man’s infinite progress to which Kennedy, following in Franklin Roosevelt’s footsteps, dedicated his life, in resolute opposition to those who wish to drastically reduce the world’s population through perpetual warfare and denial of basic needs, and in affirmation of that which distinguishes him uniquely from the beasts, namely his creative capacity to discover new, yet-unthought universal principles.

The Schiller Institute was founded in 1984 on the initiative of Helga Zepp-LaRouche, wife of the American statesman and physical economist Lyndon LaRouche, for the purpose of reviving the paradigm of Classical culture and reasserting the right of all humanity to material, moral, and intellectual progress. It is named after Friedrich Schiller, the Poet of Freedom whose Ode to Joy is immortalized by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony. The institute has sponsored many international conferences devoted to promoting the idea that a dialogue among cultures can only be fruitful when it focuses on each culture’s noblest expression.

For more about the Schiller Institute and its activities, seehttp://www.schillerinstitute.org and also http://newparadigm.schillerinstitute.com.

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Concert page now published here!

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Discusses Belt and Road Initiative with GBTimes

May 16, 2019by Jason Ross in Helga media coverage or interview, Media coverage of our activity, New Silk Road / BRI updates

[Transcript included] Helga Zepp-LaRouche gave an excellent 42-minute video interview to GBTimes’ Senior Editor Asa Butcher on May 10.  GBTimes is a Chinese multimedia site based in Finland, and established to enhance a dialogue between China and Europe. 

Transcript

GBTimes: We’ll begin.  I’m going to focus on the Belt and Road Initiative today, following on from the Forum in Beijing last week.  If you could describe your feelings on the outcome of the Forum that concluded last week in Beijing.

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Oh, I think it was very a really important progress as compared to the first Belt and Road Forum. The first Belt and Road Forum was filled with optimism and the knowledge of all the participants that we were experiencing the birth of a new system of international relations — that was already extremely important.  But I think the Second Belt and Road Forum saw a consolidation of that, so you have actually a new system of international relations which is overcoming geopolitics, and I think this is one of the most important outcomes, apart from, naturally, the enormous economic development which was presented.  But I think the idea that you have a system which has a win-win possibility for everybody to cooperate, is the way to overcome geopolitics, and that is the remaining danger, which after all, caused two world wars in the last century.  So this is a real breakthrough for humanity.

GBTimes:  There’s been a growing criticism and backlash against the BRI.  Do you think this is misunderstanding, suspicion toward this new system?  What are your thoughts on that?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  It’s actually a temporary phenomenon, because the funny thing was, here you had the largest infrastructure program in history, ever, with enormous changes for Africa, for Latin America, for Asia, even for European countries, and the Western media and think-tanks pretended it did not exist for almost four years!  And then, all of a sudden, they realized, “Oh, this is really growing so rapidly; it is including more than 100 countries.” So they started what I think was a coordinated attack, slandering the Belt and Road Initiative, with arguments which I think can all individually can be proven to be a lie.  It comes from the old geopolitical effort to control the world by manipulating countries against each other, and with the Belt and Road Initiative, I think that possibility is vanishing, and that’s why they’re so angry and hysterical.

GBTimes: What could China do to reduce this demonization of the BRI?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  I think China is already doing a lot.  For example, even Handelsblatt, which was very negative towards the Belt and Road Initiative in the past, they had to bring an article which brought out the fact that the whole argument that China is putting the countries of the third world into a “debt trap” is not holding.  For example, the IMF just released figures that there are 17 African countries which may not be able to pay their debt, but China is only engaged in 3 of them, and all of the others have huge debts to the Paris Club and to other big Western banks — so, who’s putting whom into a debt trap?

All of these arguments will be very easy to counter-argue, and the more China makes known its beautiful culture, people will be won over.  Because the beauty of Chinese painting, of Classical music, it will win over the hearts.  And the most people understand what China is actually doing, the less these attacks will be possible to maintain.

GBTimes:  The attacks are more on China than on the Belt and Road Initiative, you say?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Well, yes.  They’re on China because China is the major motor behind it.  And some of the attacks were that China is supposedly an autocratical dictatorship, and surveillance state and all of these things.  But first of all, concerning surveillance, I think the NSA and the GCHQ have outdone anybody already.  And naturally China has a system which uplifts the morality of the people:  This is based on the Confucian tradition, and for some of the very liberal people in the West, that is already too much, because it disturbs their idea that everything goes, everything is allowed, and from that standpoint, any kind of emphasis on morality is too much for these people.

GBTimes:  Isn’t sometimes criticism of new ideas and initiatives healthy? It’s what we understand here in the West, we don’t openly unquestionably accept new things.  We do question, and we are a little bit cynical sometimes.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  It’s superfluous.  It’s a waste of energy and it distracts people from accomplishing what needs to be accomplished: Namely, to overcome poverty in Africa, in Latin America, even in Europe.  You know, Europe has 90 million poor people, and I have not seen a plan by the European Union to overcome poverty by 2010, which China intends to do with its own poor people.

So I think it’s a waste of energy, and it comes from what I call, when people put on geopolitical spectacles and have neocolonial headphones, then they see and hear the world quite differently from what it is, namely, they only project their own views.

GBTimes:  Having been writing about China for the last 5-7 years, it has made a dramatic entrance onto the world stage, when I started writing about it many years ago.  And the speed of its arrival, the size of the investments, it can scare a lot of countries — just family and friends who don’t know much about China, they want to know about my job where I’m introducing China to the West, as this bridge.  There’s a lot of a misunderstandings.  Do you think some of it comes from this ignorance? And how could that be changed?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  I have the feeling that everybody who was in China, either as a tourist or as a business person, investing or trading, they all come back and they have a very, very positive view.  People are impressed about what they see, the really incredible fast train system.  Then, if you go in the region of Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Guangdong, Macao, Hong Kong, this is the powerhouse of the world economy, not just the Belt and Road Initiative.

Compare that with the decrepit infrastructure in the United States or many parts of Western Europe, for example.  Less than two years ago, I was in Zhuhai at a conference, and we visited this bridge between Hong Kong and Zhuhai and Macao, linking this entire triangular:  And this bridge was built, I think, in six years or eight years, including planning!  Now, in Germany, we have a famous bridge between Mainz and Wiesbaden, which has been in repair for almost six to eight years, and it’s still not ready!

So, I think if people go to China, they come back and they are completely impressed, because they see that in China, people have now virtues, like industriousness, ingenuity, creativity — these are all values we used to have in the West, like when the Germany economic miracle was made in the postwar reconstruction, these values and virtues were German.  But now, no longer.  Now, we have all kinds of other crazy ideas, and therefore China is taking the lead.

So the people who go to China come back with a positive image, and those who have not been, naturally, they’re scared by the negative reports in the media.  So the more people can actually go and form their own image, the better.

GBTimes:  I have myself, I’ve seen a disconnect between China and Chinese society, and then the role of the Chinese government, the more negative side that gets covered about in the Western media.  Do you think, for instance, with the BRI is just a way to legitimize the Chinese leadership in the world, and to raise it up to the same level that is given to the other countries?  Do you think that’s acceptable?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, it is a challenge.  Some of the Western institutions talked about that there is now a competition of the systems, meaning the Chinese state model and the Western free market model. And in one sense, it is true; the only problem is that if you have the neo-liberal system, especially after the crisis of 2008, only favoring monetarist interests — the banks, the speculators — and the gap between the rich and the poor becomes ever wider, naturally, then, if you have a country where that is not the case, namely, China having a policy which is oriented toward the common good, an increasing well-to-do middle class of 300 million people, which in 5-10 years will be 600 million people, and obviously the vector of development is upward, naturally that is regarded as a threat by the neo-liberal establishment, which only takes care of its own privileges.

So in a certain sense, the challenge does exist, but I think there is the possibility of a learning process, so one can be hopeful that even some elements of the Western elites will recognize that China is doing something right.

GBTimes:  What do you think China could learn from the Western mode?  And vice versa, what do you think the two could learn from one another?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  I think China can learn a lot from the West, but I’m afraid to say, not from the present, contemporaries, or, there is very little to learn.  Naturally, ESA cooperating with the Chinese space agency, there is a lot of exchange possible. But in terms of general, cultural outlook, I think China has to go back about 200 years to find positive things in Europe, or the United States, for that matter.  You know, European Classical culture can be an enormous enrichment for China, but these are composers who are Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, or great poets.  But these are all things which, unfortunately are not dominating the cultural outlook of most Europeans and Americans today.  So there has to be a dialogue across the centuries, and then both sides can profit from each other.

GBTimes: In a sense, you’re very pessimistic about the Western stands at the moment.  Do you think China is the only option available to the West at the moment?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  No, I’m not pessimistic, I’m just saying that you see that some of the elites, or so-called elites, are hardened in their view.  You have others who are absolutely recognizing that the whole mankind needs to cooperate together in new ways, for example, Switzerland.  You know the President of Switzerland, who participated in the Belt and Road Forum just signed a memorandum of understanding, not only for Switzerland, but for a whole group of Central and Eastern European countries, which Switzerland is representing in the international organizations.

So there is a big motion.  You have Italy signing a memorandum of understanding with China, on the development of Africa.  Greece wants to be the gateway between trade from Asia, through the Suez Canal all the way into Europe.  Portugal and Spain want to be the hub for the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking people around the world.

So there is a lot of dynamics and motions, I’m just referring to some of the monetarist views and those people who talk about the “rules-based order” all the time, but what they really mean is austerity.

So, I’m not talking about the West in general.  I think the West  — I’m an optimist about the potential of all human beings — I’m only talking about certain parts of the establishment in the West.

GBTimes:  You mentioned Italy and Switzerland.  How significant is it that they signed up to the BRI now?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  I think this is extremely important.  First of all, Italy, as you know, is the third largest economy in Europe.  The north of Italy is highly industrialized and has a lot of industrial capability; many hidden champions actually are in northern Italy.  So, if such a country is now, as the first G7 country, officially joining with a memorandum of understanding, this can become the model for all of Europe.  And Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte who just participated in the Belt and Road Forum came back and said exactly that: That Italy plans to be the leader in bringing about a better relation between China and Europe.  So I think this is extremely important.

And Switzerland, even if it may be a small country, they are independent; they are sovereign, they are not part of the European Union.  And President Maurer just declared, or his spokesman, that they do not need advice from the European Union because they can make their own policy.  So, I think this is all a new, healthy spirit of self-consciousness and self-assertion, which is very good, and can be indeed a sign of hope for everybody else.

GBTimes:  How do you see it impacting Europe, their participation in the BRI, in the short term, and perhaps in the longer term?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Well, there are different learning curves: Some are quicker, others are slower.  For example, the so-called four big countries  — that does not include Italy — that did not send heads of state or government, but only ministers, Spain, France, Germany, and I think Great Britain,  by not sending their heads of state sort of expressed their reservation.  But then even the German Economic Minister Altmaier, who on the first day of the Belt and Road Forum basically said, “we have to have transparency and rules,” with the usual kind of arguments, but the next day, he said something much more positive.  He said: Oh, this was much better than I expected, the Chinese are actually trying to solve problems, and I will come back in June with a large delegation of businessmen.  So, I actually find this quite good.  It shows that eventually, I think, I hope, reason will prevail.

GBTimes:  I think some of the obstacles for Western countries, is like Turkey refusing to participate because of the Uighur problem; that there are other issues that aren’t related to the Belt and Road, that China has to overcome first.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  All of these problems will eventually be solved, because I think the key to solving of any regional, ethnic, historical cultural problem is development.  If people actually see the advantage of turning non-developed countries or areas into prosperous ones, into having more youth exchange, young people understanding each other, people-to-people exchange, dialogue of cultures, bringing forth the best tradition of each culture; plus, naturally, real improvement of living standards, longevity, I think that even if not all develop with the same speed, we are at a tremendous change of an epoch of human civilization.  The idea of these local and regional conflicts will eventually not be there any more.

If I just can point to the fact that now the eight radio-telescopes working together, being able to make, for the first time, images of the black hole in a galaxy which is 55 million light-years away, proving that Einstein’s theory of general relativity was actually correct — now, that, for me is the sign of the future:  Because this image could not have been made by one country alone.  It needed telescopes sited in Chile, in Spain, in the United States, in the Antarctic,  and you needed the whole world actually working together to make such a technological breakthrough possible.

I think that that will be the kind of relationship people will have to each other in the future, and I think this is what Xi Jinping really is the kind of thing he means when he says, “a shared community for the one future of humanity.”  Because the common interest will eventually come first, and then everything else will fall into place.

GBTimes: Another one of the criticisms was currently “all roads lead back to Beijing” rather than a multilateral approach to BRI, where it’s between other country, it always leads back to China at the moment.  Do you think that is a problem?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I don’t know.  First of all, I think Russia has a big influence, I think the African countries are becoming much more knowledgeable and confident about their own role. There are many Africans who speak that, in the future, Africa will be the new China with African characteristics.  So, I think it’s all changing very quickly, and those people who complain that there is too much Chinese influence, well, then they should bring in their active, creative contribution, and define what the new platform of humanity should be.

And I think China has said many times, and I have absolutely every confidence that that is the case, that they’re not trying to export their  social model, but that they’re just offering the experience of the incredible success of the last 40 years of the form in opening-up, and basically tell developing countries, “Here, if you want to have our help in accomplishing the same thing, we are willing to provide it.”  And naturally, the countries of the developing sector, which had been neglected, or even treated negatively by colonialism, by the IMF conditionalities, when they now have the absolute, concrete offer to overcome poverty and underdevelopment, why should they not take it?

So, I think all these criticisms are really badly covered efforts to hide their own motives.  I really think China is doing the best thing which has happened to humanity for a very long time, and I think the Belt and Road Initiative is the only long-term plan for how to transform the world into a peaceful place.  And I think that should be applauded and people should have a cooperative approach.

GBTimes:  My next question was going to be, how confident are you that the BRI will pay off for China, but I get the sense that you’re very confident.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Oh, I think it already paying off!  First of all, it makes it more easy for China to develop its own western and internal regions, because they are now sort of integrated into the Belt and Road transport routes to Europe, to Central Asia, integrating the Belt and Road Initiative with the Eurasian Economic Union, and hopefully eventually also the European Union. So I think it is already bringing benefits to China.

And from an economic standpoint, the more a country exports high technology goods and technologies, the more than becomes a motor to develop one’s own industry even to high levels.  So it’s like a self-inspiration, so to speak, and that is already paying off.  That’s what any country should do.

GBTimes:  You mentioned technology:  It’s also the digital Silk Road, Digital Belt and Road. Of course, China has a lot of control over its internet, on the Great Firewall:  How much of a barrier do you think that will be for countries to build relationships via the Belt and Road Initiative?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  You mean the G5 question and Huawei?

GBTimes:  Well, partly that, too, but also the control of the internet inside of China, which is difficult for Western companies to do business, to establish themselves, as there are a lot of controls there.  Do you think that could be a barrier, as part of the digital Belt and Road, that’s also being discussed.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Well, I think there can be ways of making arrangements which are satisfying to everybody.  This whole question of “digital control” and so forth, is highly exaggerated, because, if you look at who is controlling the internet, you have the big firms, Apple, Google, Facebook, and they are very linked with the Western government’s.  You know, in a certain sense, after the scandal of the NSA listening into everybody’s discussions, which erupted a couple of years ago and which was never changed or remedied or anything, we are living in a world where that already happening.  And I think China is not doing anything more than the NSA or the already mentioned GCHQ doing that in the West.

So I think the fact that China has a competitive system, to this Western system is what causes all of this debate. Because the people who had the control of the internet first, they should like to keep it that way, and they regard China as a competitor, which they don’t like, but that’s a fact of reality now.

GBTimes:  One question I have is why do you think the Belt and Road Initiative is needed, when there’s the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, now?  Do you think the two are mutually exclusive, or do they work together?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: No, I think the Belt and Road Initiative has many financing mechanisms.  You have the AIIB, you have the New Silk Road Fund, you have a lot of the Chinese banks themselves which are doing the investment.  I have been advocating for a very long time, that the West should modify its own credit institutions to work on a similar principle.  Now, that would be actually very possible, because the American System of economy as it was developed by Alexander Hamilton, who created the first National Bank as an institution for issuing credit, that is actually very close to what China is doing.  As a matter of fact, I would even go so far as to say, that the Chinese economic model is much closer to the American System, as it was developed by Alexander Hamilton, and then revived by Lincoln, by Henry C. Carey, by Franklin D. Roosevelt; so if the United States would say, we create our own national bank; and Germany, for example, would say, we go back to the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, the Credit Institution for Reconstruction, which was used for the reconstruction of Germany in the postwar period, which was also a state bank, — or it still is a state bank — then you could have a new credit system, whereby each country would have their own national bank; you would have clearing houses in between them to compensate for duration of investment, or the differences between small and large countries with lots of raw materials, or not so much — you need these clearinghouses.  But you could create a new credit system, a New Bretton Woods system with fixed exchange rates, having a stability in the system which the Western system presently does not have.

So, I think that the more countries go to these kinds of credit financing of projects the more stable this new system will become.

GBTimes:  Do you think the United States will ever become part of the Belt and Road Initiative, under the Presidency of Donald Trump, or perhaps whoever is voted in next

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  That’s actually the big question, you know: Will the rise of China be answered by the United States, either with a war, the Thucydides trap which some people have mentioned as a danger? There were in history twelve cases where a rising power overtook the dominant power up to that point, and it led to war; and there were four cases where it happened in a peaceful way.  Now, China, first of all, has offered that neither of these two options should occur, but they have offered a special great power special relationship model, based on the acceptance of the other social model’s sovereignty, non-interference.  And I think Trump with his America, First policy is more inclined to respond to such a model than the previous administrations of Obama and Bush, who had these interventionist wars in the Middle East and everywhere else for exporting their system of so-called “democracy” and human rights.

So I think President Trump has said very clearly that he wants to have a good relationship with China.  He calls President Xi Jinping his friend all the time.  And I think the present trade negotiations actually, in my view, demonstrate that the United States would suffer tremendously, if they would try to decouple from the Chinese economy.  They probably would suffer more than China, because China is much more capable, in my view, to compensate for the loss of the relationship with the United States.

But I think that the hopefully reasonable way would be to say, “OK, let’s use the foreign exchange reserves of China which they have in terms of U.S. Treasuries; let’s invest them through an infrastructure bank in the United States, to help to modernize American infrastructure.”  And that would be an urgent need, because if you look at the U.S. infrastructure, it’s really in a terrible condition, and President Trump, who is talking today, I think, with the leading Democrats Pelosi and Schumer on a new infrastructure legislation; the sums which are discussed here, from what I have heard so far, are so small!  First of all, the Republicans don’t want to have Federal spending; the Democrats are talking only about “repair,” and small issues.

So, what is lacking in these discussions is a grand design, where you would take the approach China has taken for the modernization of its infrastructure:  To have fast train systems among all the major cities, to have slow-speed maglev trains for intra-urban transport.  Now, you could take that same approach and modernize the entire infrastructure of the United States. And if China would, in turn, off that U.S. companies would integrate more into the projects of the Belt and Road around the world, it would be beneficial for both. Some American companies are already doing that, like Caterpillar, General Electric, Honeywell, but that could be a real incentive for the United States to go in tis direction.

Hopefully it will happen that way, because if not, I think a clash between the two largest economies would be a catastrophe for the whole world: So, let’s hope that the forces of good will all work together to get to this positive end.

GBTimes:  Let’s talk about the Schiller Institute itself as a think tank.  What is your day-to-day role in the promotion of the Belt and Road Initiative? How do you work to support it?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Oh, you know, this all goes back to the life’s work of my husband, who died recently:  Mr. Lyndon LaRouche; who spent, actually, the last 50 years, to work on very concrete development projects. The first such project we presented in ’76 in Paris.  This was a comprehensive plan for the infrastructure development of all of Africa.  Then we worked together with the President of Mexico José López Portillo on a Latin American development plan — this was ’82.  We worked with Indira Gandhi on a 40-year development plan, and also in the beginning of the ’80s, we developed a 50-year development plan for the Pacific Basin. And then, when the Berlin Wall came down, and the Soviet Union disintegrated, we proposed to connect the European and Asian population and industrial centers through development corridors, and we called that the Eurasian Land-Bridge.

So we have been engaged in these kinds of big projects for the transformation of the world economy for the last decades, and naturally, we proposed it to China in the beginning of the ’90s. I attended a big conference in ’96 in Beijing, which had the title, “The Development of the Regions along the Eurasian Land-Bridge.”  And China, at that time, declared the building of the Eurasian Land-Bridge the long-term strategic aim of China by 2010.  Then, naturally, came the Asia crisis in ’97, so the whole thing go interrupted.

We were very happy when Xi Jinping announced the New Silk Road in 2013, because, in the meantime, we had kept working for this.  We had many conferences, actually hundreds of conferences and seminars all over the world.  So this is has been one major point of what the Schiller Institute has been doing for the last decades.  So naturally, we are very happy that now, what was only planning on our side is now being realized by the second largest economy in the world, and therefore, it becomes reality: And that makes quite happy.

GBTimes:  Is there anything else you’d like to add?  I’ve asked my questions and a lot more.  Is there anything we haven’t touched upon, you’d like to talk about?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  We could talk a little bit more about the culture of the New Silk Road.

GBTimes:  Please — in what way?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Well, I think that the New Silk Road, or the Belt and Road Initiative, it’s not just about economics and infrastructure.  But I think equally important, if not more important, in my view, is the cultural side of it:  That it could lead and will hopefully lead to an exchange of the best traditions of all cultures of this world.  And by reviving the best traditions, like Confucianism in China, Beethoven in Germany, and Schiller; Verdi in Italy, and so forth and so on, it will ennoble the souls of the people, and I think that that is the most important question right now, because I agree with Friedrich Schiller, according to whom this institute is named: That any improvement in the political realm can only come from the moral improvement of the people.  And therefore, I think it’s also very interesting to me that President Xi Jinping has emphasized the aesthetical education as extremely important, because the goal of this is the beautiful mind of the pupil, of the student.

Now, that is exactly what Friedrich Schiller said, who in the response to the Jacobin Terror in the French Revolution, wrote his Aesthetical Letters in which he develops his aesthetical theory, which I find is in great cohesion with what Xi Jinping is saying; and that has also to do with the fact that the first education minister of the Chinese Republic studied in Germany, and he studied Schiller and Humboldt; his name was Cai Yuanpei  — I’m probably pronouncing it wrong again  —  but he was the first president of the Beijing University, and I think there is a great affinity, a much greater affinity between the thinking of the aesthetical education as it is discussed by Xi Jinping and as it does exist in the Schiller-Humboldt tradition in Germany, in particular.  I would just hope that that kind of a dialogue could be intensified, because then I think a lot of the prejudices and insecurities about the other culture would disappear, and you would bring back and bring forth the best of all sides.

GBTimes:  How could this be accomplished, do you think? What sort of forms?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: You can organize conferences, you can more consciously make the poetry known — I think poetry is very, very important, which is naturally not so easy, because as Schiller said, you have to be a poet in two languages to do justice to the poetry of one language.  You could have more conscious theater performances, not just as an entertainment but involving students, children, adults, and make more exhibitions, make more deep-level understanding of the other culture.

I think China is doing an enormous amount of that, but I would have still some suggestions to make it more than entertainment, because many people go to these things, and they don’t quite “get it” what it’s all about; and then, it was nice, but the deeper philosophical, poetical, musical meaning could be made more pedagogically intelligible, and I think that would be a way of opening the hearts of more people, because they would recognize what treasures are there to be discovered.

GBTimes:  Do you have any closing words on the Belt and Road you’d like to share with our readers?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  I think we are probably the generation on whom later generations will look back to, and say, “Oh! This was really a fascinating time, because it was a change from an epoch to another one.”  And I have an image of that, which is, this change that we are experiencing right now, is probably going to be bigger than the change in Europe between the Middle Ages and modern times.  In the Middle Ages you had people believing in a whole bunch of axioms, the scholastics, Aristotelianism, witchcraft — all kinds of strange beliefs — and then, because of the influx of such thinkers as Nicholas of Cusa, or the Italian Renaissance, the modern image of man, of science and technology, of the sovereign nation-state, all these changes happened, and they created a completely different view of the image of man and of nature, and the universe, and everything we call “modern society” was the result of this change.

Now, I think we are in front, or the middle of such an epochal change, where the next era of mankind will be much, much more creative than the present one, and that’s something to look forward to, because we can actually shape it, and we can bring our own creative input into it.  And there are not many periods in history when that is the case:  So we are actually lucky.

Frankfurt Resolution: “Either Glass-Steagall, or Chaos and Genocide”

April 18, 2013by tobi in Germany SI activity, Our conferences

The following resolution was adopted on April 14, at the conclusion of a two-day conference by the Schiller Institute, which was dedicated to the creation of a New Paradigm to Save Civilization.

“We, gathered here near Frankfurt, Germany, representing countries from all continents, give our full support to the immediate voting up of a Glass-Steagall Act in the United States, both in the House of Representatives and the Senate, in line with the bill introduced by Rep. Marcy Kaptur and Rep. Walter Jones called the “Return to Prudent Banking Act” (HR 129).

“We are all convinced that it is a matter of life or death, and that it is only a Glass-Steagall Act in the United States that can stop the genocidal policies of the worldwide monetarist system. It is the necessary weapon to break the chains of the British Empire. In a word: It is either Glass-Steagall, or chaos and genocide.

“We in our respective countries are committed to lead that fight for a Glass-Steagall principle, both in the United States and within each of our nations. Glass-Steagall is only the first step. We must also replace the present monetary system with a public credit system in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton, based on national banking, in order to finance reconstruction of the world economy. That implies each country’s sovereignty over its own currency.

“If mankind is to have a future, we must end the present policies of conflict resolution through war, and agree on the common aims of mankind, such as overcoming poverty on Earth, and defending the planet against the very real dangers from outer space through the policies of the Strategic Defense of Earth.

“The immediate implementation of Glass-Steagall, however, is the absolutely irreplaceable mandatory first step, without which none of the other objectives has any chance of realization.

“Our common development is the new name of peace and the only alternative to thermonuclear war.”

Schiller Institute NYC Chorus Memorializes LaRouche in Bronx Concert

May 10, 2019by Jason Ross in New York City SI activity, Our cultural events, Our musical events

On Sunday May 5th, the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus performed the Mozart Solemn Vespers, African-American Spirituals, and Verdi at a concert dedicated to the memory of Lyndon LaRouche in Little Italy of the Bronx. The chorus was joined by five professional soloists and orchestra, and everything, except the Bach organ prelude was performed at the Verdi tuning of c=256 Hz.

250-300 people turned out in the pouring rain to hear this wonderful program, which opened with the church organist playing a Bach organ prelude, and ended with Italian Opera arias sung by the soloists. Although there were several young children in the crowd, there was not a sound, except applause, which erupted after the first amen in the Vespers. One person commented that the Vespers was performed in such a transparent way that the genius of Mozart leapt out at him—the orchestra playing counterpoint to the chorus, as another voice, and not a unison.

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Having everyone’s best loved Italian Opera arias sung by African-American, Chinese, and Greek soloists definitely demonstrated the universal quality of great music, and thrilled the Italian-Americans in the audience, and several were heard to be singing along by the end.

Also in attendance was the Ambassador from Sri Lanka to the UN, who was recognized by the priest and by Dennis Speed in his welcoming remarks, who expressed a dedication to the memory of those who had perished in the Easter massacres in Sri Lanka, killing over 300 people, including children in Sunday School. In dedicating the concert to Lyndon LaRouche, Dennis quoted from LaRouche’s review of the Mozart opera La Clemenza di Tito, and spoke of Lyndon’s critical insights and support for the choral process in Manhattan.

“All Classical art speaks directly to you, as an individual personality; it addresses the question each of us must ask ourselves at some point in our lives, or perhaps even repeatedly,
‘Who am I, and what are we? Since we are all born, and shall die, what is the meaning of that individual existence we occupy between birth and death? What is the continuation of that life, even after we are dead?’ Thus, great Classical art touches the same issues as Christianity and the themes of Judaism treated by the great Moses Mendelssohn.

“So, Mozart speaks to you personally, through La Clemenza di Tito, from the operatic stage. “Mozart does not preach; he evokes the experience of the discovery of the principle of agapë within the cognitive experience of the individual member of the audience, by means of the unfolding, ironical development within the drama as a whole. In the history of Christianity, for example, it has been the similar re-experiencing of the Passion of Christ from Gethsemane through and beyond the Crucifixion, which has been the artistic quality of reliving that impassioned experience upon which the strength of Christianity has depended. There is perhaps no more conclusive demonstration of that, than is supplied by J.S. Bach’s
St. Matthew Passion.

“…At the time of his death, and earlier, Mozart was essentially a leading Christian of his time, as his Ave Verum Corpus expresses this principle of Classical artistic composition with wonderful succinctness.” 

Lyndon LaRouche

The chorus, now in its 5th year, has 80 members from Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and northern NJ, and the singers range in age from 27 to 89, and include college students, young professionals and retired people, a Chinese concert pianist, and a Bishop from a Church in Harlem, who also speaks German. They have all developed over the years, to the point that new members often flee, intimidated by the quality of the Manhattan rehearsal, and we have to call them back and assure them that many of the people they think sound so good, also couldn’t read music when they joined. (And many still can’t.)

The audience was largely from the neighborhood of the church, which is a very well-known Italian area, and has Italian shops, restaurants and bakeries which have been in the same families for over a century, in several cases. Italian-Americans from all over Westchester County, NJ and Connecticut come here to get their favorite Italian foods. These shop owners have been regular patrons of the chorus, buying ads in our programs for the last 3 years, and always asking us, “When are you going to hold a concert in the Bronx???” They were thrilled that we finally were at their church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

The associate priest, who is from Ghana, loved every minute of the concert and asked us to come back. When we said, “Yes, maybe next year.” He said, “I wish you could be here every day!”

Video coming soon!

To find out more about the NYC Schiller Institute Chorus, visit sinycchorus.com.

At the Dawn of a Musical Revolution:

Mozart’s Solemn Vespers

The following was written by Schiller Institute music director, John Sigerson, who conducted the May 5 performance in New York City.

By the time he composed the Vesperae solennes de confessore in 1780, the 24-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was already a vastly accomplished composer who had produced 14 masses and hundreds of other works. Yet in this work, a setting of one of the most ancient offices of the Catholic Church, we experience vigorous new buds of a musical and scientific revolution—a revolution that today is making it possible to raise all humanity “out of the dust, and lift the needy out of the dunghill” (Psalm 113, “Laudate pueri”).

For today, we can celebrate the fact that the nation of Italy, cradle of the high Florentine Renaissance and of the Church, has reached out to officially join with history’s greatest movement to eliminate poverty worldwide, China’s “New Silk Road” or “Belt and Road” initiative, a policy grounded in Confucian principles which resonate with those of the best of the Western Christian humanist tradition.

“But wait a minute!” you might be saying to yourself. “How could a revolution in music possibly launch an economic plan to eliminate poverty worldwide?” The answer is both simple and complex: We are all human, and unlike other animals and inanimate things, our ability to make breakthroughs in our spiritual grasp of universal principles governing the created universe, enables us physically to devise new technologies, and also new forms of culture, to harness those principles for the betterment of all mankind. Every truly great physical scientist, from Nicholas of Cusa and Kepler to Einstein and Vernadsky, every great physical economist from Gottfried Leibniz and Alexander Hamilton to Lyndon LaRouche, and every great Classical composer from J.S. Bach to Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, well knew that connection.

The nature of what is best termed the Mozart-Haydn Revolution in Music, in fact occurred about two years after Mozart composed the Vespers, i.e. in 1781-82, when Mozart, who had just moved his family to Vienna, participated in discussions with Josef Haydn and others at the salon of Baron van Swieten, who from Berlin had brought back manuscripts of the virtually suppressed works of Johann Sebastian Bach. For both Mozart and Haydn, the explosive impact of Bach’s works such as The Musical Offering and The Art of the Fugue unleashed “a new way of composing” (in Haydn’s words), based not on melodic forms, but rather on more fundamental elements underlying those forms. This new method has been described by Norbert Brainin, the late first violinist of the legendary Amadeus Quartet, as Motivführung, or motivic thorough-composition; it frees all the voices in a composition to generate new forms in such a way, that it is not the sounds of the music—however pleasant they may be—but rather the underlying, soundless musical/poetic ideas which govern the development.

Returning to Mozart’s 1780 Vespers, in hindsight we see here the buds that bore that rich fruit, in relation both to J.S. Bach, but also to Mozart’s older friend Josef Haydn.

Take, for example, the second piece in the series, “Confitebor,” a setting of Psalm 111. Anyone who has heard J.S. Bach’s famous cantata “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” will immediately hear this echoed in the opening bars of the “Confitebor,” which also happens to be in the same key of E-flat Major. Had Mozart seen or heard that cantata? Probably not in performance. The original Lutheran hymn with that melody was first published in 1599 by Philipp Nicolai, and stood in many Lutheran hymnals. But more likely, is that it was suggested to Mozart directly, via a member of Bach’s large family which extended throughout Europe.

Consider this: In April 1778, J.S. Bach’s fourth son, Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, traveled along with his own son Wilhelm to London, where he met up with his brother, Johann Christian Bach. Two years later, in 1780, J.C.F. Bach composed his own cantata “Wachet auf” as a tribute to his father, further developing its theme. We can only speculate that when he met his brother in London two years earlier, his plans to compose it were already ripening, and that it formed part of their discussions.

Now pursue the trail further: Five months later, in August 1778, Johann Christian Bach traveled to France, where he met 22-year-old Mozart at the estate of Louis, Maréchal de Noailles. (France had recognized the new American republic in April 1778; de Noailles was a backer of the American war against the British Empire, and his granddaughter’s husband had joined with Lafayette in George Washington’s army.) J.C. Bach, then 42, was a long-time mentor and friend of Mozart, having first met him in 1764 when Mozart’s father took the eight-year-old prodigy to London. Much later, Mozart’s sister Nannerl recollected that

“Herr Johann Christian Bach, music master of the queen, took Wolfgang between his knees. He would play a few measures; then Wolfgang would continue. In this manner they played entire sonatas. Unless you saw it with your own eyes, you would swear that just one person was playing.”

Could J.C. Bach have suggested the “Wachet auf” theme that his brother was working on, to his younger friend? Perhaps, perhaps not, but the facts alone already give an idea of the rich interpenetration of ideas among Europe’s greatest musical minds. The Vesperae solennes, far from being a “solemn” work which its title might suggest, is bubbling with optimism and kernels of ideas which he developed in his later works, especially his operas. In fact, these little idea-lets fly by so quickly, that one scarcely has time to take one in, before yet another cascades in.

In part, this lack of time to develop ideas was an evil from which Mozart was already plotting to escape, namely from the Bishop of Salzburg’s strict edict that no work of sacred music last longer than 30 minutes! Fortunately, we today do not have to adhere to the Bishop’s arbitrary rule, and so we shall take a bit longer than that, in the hope that you may manage to take in as many snatches as possible of these great ideas.

Houston Concert: The Healing Power of Mozart & Spirituals

May 10, 2019by Jason Ross in General, Houston SI activity, Our musical events

The Houston Schiller Institute Community Chorus, with Maestro Dorceal Duckens, our great pianist Joshua, and newly added string players, made beautiful music unto Heaven during our May 5th concert at the Riverside United Methodist Church, 3rd Ward, Houston. Ironically, the lights in the church sanctuary were not working the day of the concert; thus, creating a dramatic setting as the sun set through the church’s gorgeous stained glass windows. With wonderful acoustics in the church, and the evening sun filling the sanctuary, the concert made a big impact on the audience. The “Mozart Effect” on the 50+ attendees in audience was palpable.

While the church was not full, those in attendance reflected a broad outreach of our organizing around the city. We had a number of pastors, several members of the Ebony Opera Guild, members of our director’s church, Chinese contacts of the Schiller Institute, and a few members of the Riverside Church. Many attending knew Maestro Duckens only as a great singer and were amazed to discover he is also a great conductor! Also in attendance was the vocal coach from another local opera company, as well as the Choir Master from a local church.  A couple drove over an hour after they had seen the concert advertised on an online blog. Before the concert, while speaking to a member of the chorus, the couple was very curious about the connection between Schiller the poet, economics, politics, and music but as they were leaving, they shook the member’s hand and promised they were going to look up Schiller when they got home.  One of the directors from a homeless center was amazed. He had never heard Mozart performed before and had no idea about his role in the American Revolution. Another woman, employed by the church, told a member of the chorus she used to be a singer until she developed nodes on her vocal chords and could no longer sing the high soprano notes. Imagine her fascination when she learned we sing at the C=256 pitch to preserve the human voice and instruments! During the performance she was observed singing softly with every Spiritual. Another attendee, who has followed the work of the Schiller Institute and chorus member Kesha Rogers’ campaigns for congress, told a member afterwards that this concert had “healed him” since he had just suffered the loss of a child two weeks ago.

houston-vespers-ii

Worth noting is the impact the Mozart Solemn Vespers on this audience, many of whom knew the Spirituals well. One of the “church ladies” remarked to a chorus member, “you guys were full of the Spirit—even the Mozart was like that!” In observing the ladies during the concert, he noted how they looked at each other in amazement during the intense contrapuntal sections. One turned to two others and mouthed, “I want to clap” after the Laudate Dominum, but held herself back, as did the rest of the audience, until we had completed the entire work.  Following the event, we had a small reception where several of the attendees joined us for discussion; people were just beaming with joy.

Several people inquired about joining our chorus. This was certainly on a higher level than anything that we have done before. We truly unified and brought the community together from all walks of life around beautiful bel-canto music that moved the mind and soul. We were so happy to be joining our friends there in NY as both choruses sang in harmony together in different space times.

For more information about the Schiller Community Chorus or how to join, visit our Houston Chorus page.

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