Question: I'm Ryan from Philadelphia, and an organizer there. Now, I don't exactly know how to formulate this question to you, but it comes out of a discussion that I was having with [name], who is a student also, temporarily, in Philadelphia.  But we were contrasting Beethoven's Grosse Fugue to some piece of Mahler, which I actually don't know what that was. And, I was thinking about how, many times, you've discussed art as conveying these profound ideas. And I also think about the time that we're living in and how you said to the students in--. Well, first of all, maybe something on these two pieces, the composition, the way the mind works in one, and the way the other, you know, people have been saying, actually some have attributed to you that some parts of Mahler are okay. So I don't know anything about that. I'd never listened to him, except for this one piece.

But, the other question I have is, in terms of organizing this Baby Boomer generation, too, what you've said, which is the youth need to inspire, I look at this Grosse Fugue as difficult an idea to understand as it is to try to inspire this generation too. So maybe you could say something about that.

LaRouche: Okay. Well, first of all, you have to think about, not music in general, you have to think about the two principle currents in European civilization. The so-called Romantic and the Classical. The Classical means, significantly, essentially, it means two exemplary things--.

Well, a good example of the Classical. My experience--I've reported on this before, but maybe it's relevant as a point of reference here. In 1987-88, I was confronted with the fact that the Communist government of Florence was destroying the cupola of the Cathedral of Florence, largely through stupidity and arrogance, not because they understood what they were doing. And, what was crucial was--they were engaged in so-called repairing or fixifying, or whatever, Florence to make it a tourist attraction, and they thought they would make these improvements in the maintenance in the leading artifacts in the area. So I was very upset by this. They were trying to fill up certain holes that the architect, Brunelleschi, had put into the structure of the cupola. And I came into a kind of collaboration with a professor, who was a science-engineering professor in that area, who specialized in this work. So, I was concerned to save this cupola, because of its historic and scientific importance. But I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly what had happened.

The situation was that the Cathedral of Florence had been built up to a certain point, without a cupola. And the city fathers of Florence, particularly in the time of Cosimo de' Medici, were determined to try to improve the joint, and to get this cupola stuck on top of this cathedral. Well, the problem was, that if they used conventional methods, the amount of wood available, existing or attainable, required to put up a cupola by conventional methods, didn't exist. So, it was impossible to construct this cupola by existing methods, with existing resources. So Brunelleschi took the job.

So my question was not all these other questions. My question: What was the principle by which Brunelleschi succeeded in doing the impossible, hmmm? Well, I clambered inside this cupola, which is like St. Peter's in Rome, which is copied from that [Brunellschi's dome]. It had an inner stairway that went up to the top, which is called the lantern, on top, and I went up and down that stairway, and I went inside it, looked at it, looked at the bricks, looked at the pictures, looked at everything, trying to find out, what was the principle which had enabled Brunelleschi to construct this cupola, without the necessary wood, which had been deemed necessary to that under normal circumstances.

And I said, "Ah! The catenary!" The problem was, the catenary was not defined as a principle of least action until the work of Leibniz at the beginning of the 18th Century--the work of Leibniz and Bernouilli which defined the fundamental principle of physical least action. And here, a couple of centuries earlier, Brunelleschi had used the principle to solve the problem! He had used Leibniz's principle of universal least action, physical least action, to construct something which was, otherwise, unconstructable!

So I went to my dear friend the Professor and said, wait a minute; this is what I think. And he went through his records, and showed that I was right. That the hanging-chain principle had been used as the actual method of putting that cupola together.

Now, this is a very important Classical principle, which is key to understanding everything about Classical composition, which is where the difference between a late Romantic like Mahler and Beethoven arises. And Bach, same thing. Is is the difference between Archaic Greek art, which is sometimes called tombstone art, tripod art, because everything is balanced, neatly on a tripod. Like the tomb symbols of some of the ancient Egyptians, from the more decadent period of Egypt. But Greek art, Classical Greek art, sculpture, doesn't look that way. It's a very important trick. The trick is, that Classical Greek sculpture was successful, like the painting, the principles of painting by Leonardo da Vinci, or the paintings of Raphael Sanzio. Or a great painting like Rembrandt's "The Bust of Homer Contemplating the Stupidity of Aristotle." These great paintings, this great art, had one characteristic: frozen motion.

Now, look at a catenary. A catenary chain--what is it? It's frozen motion! It has a singularity which is, it has force. It is not a geometric form. It is a physical geometric form which has an inherent force in it, an efficient force, which is the principle of least action! So, all art, all science, is based on these kinds of conceptions.

Now, in music, it's the same thing. In musical composition, the problem is, that Bach is not understood. Two things are not understood, particularly by instrumentalists. Instrumentalists are the most corrupted--I mean, among Classically trained musicians--instrumentalists are the worst. There are very few exceptions to it. I have--some of my friends are the best exceptions in the world, like my dear old friend Norbert Brainin. But the secret is what Furtwaengler called "performing between the notes." Now, performing between the notes is based, first of all, on a physical principle: Do not try and look back at Pythagoras on the comma, in the way that Pythagoras defined the comma, not as an abstract, at-the-blackboard mathematical principle, no. It's done on the point of his comparing a monochord string, a tuned string, with the way that the voice, the human singing voice, in a certain so-called "beautiful manner" would actually do ascending and descending intervals in various combinations and modalities. And he found this discrepancy between these directions, which came out as an amount called the "comma." Which is not an arithmetic quantity, it's a principle determination of a difference.

All music is based on that, but it's based, in particular, in modern times, since especially the Florentine bel canto method of voice training, of singing voice training. All music is based on the singing voice. Human music. There is no music which is "instrumental." Not good music. No Classical music is instrumental. The instrumental music, as anyone who is a musician knows, that the way you perform instrumental music is you sing it in your head. You have to have a singing voice, and you place, you make the instrument sing, as a voice. For example, take an instrument like the clarinet. You have to make it sing. The oboe: You have to make it sing. If the oboist does not sing, the oboe won't sing. The oboist sings in the mind, and the way the oboist performs the oboe is based on a singing conception in the mind, which he, if experienced, is able to project and impose upon the instrument.

The stringed instruments are particularly ...[tape break]... all that. The string instrument is the mind. Now, Bach's system of well-tempered counterpoint is based on that: It's in the mind. The singing voice relationships determine all music, and determine a tuning system, which Bach defines, actually solving the comma question posed by Pythagoras, at least in part. Bach combined what are essentially six different modes, principle modes, used in Europe, and combined them into one, in a single minor/major well-tempered system, which by the principle of adjoining key, adjacent key, you can get from one part of the process to any other. And, through a system of counterpoint, in which this principle was used, to create paradoxes. The fugue is a paradox. And all the principles of the fugue are exemplified by saying, like the first example, the C-minor Fugue of the First Book of the Preludes and Fugues of Bach, which contains the germ of this principle, already. And the whole system of the Preludes and Fugues contains that.

But then you look at things like the Musical Offering. The Musical Offering is an expansion of the same thing, and all the exercises point to the same business. The Musical Offering is the most quoted work in all music after Bach, especially after Mozart's work on it, Mozart's work in this area: the Lydian principle. The European development of the Lydian principle of all Classical composers is based on that. And the idea of the other modalities being introduced as complements to the Lydian mode, was added. So that actually, even though you have a major/minor system, you actually have a modal system, which, on the basis of adjacent key, adjoining key, or nearest key, you can modify these things, and you can migrate through the thing everywhere. And what you do, is you create paradoxes which are apparently atonal paradoxes, and you find that in the gap of these paradoxes, if you resolve them, you find very interesting things occur.

Now, what happens is, in the case of--which I first understood in 1945, or '46 actually, coming back from Burma. I was stuck in a military replacement depot outside of Calcutta. And some friends of mine, who were musicians, and I, were there, and we were scrounging around to get some music. And coming out of the jungle, you really want music.

So, we dug up, among other things, some recordings of Furtwaengler, conducting, above all things, Tchaikovsky, who is not my favorite composer. And I was nearly knocked off my chair. And other people were also similarly knocked off their chairs, by hearing this performance by Furtwaengler. What Furtwaengler did, he was the cleanest conductor you could ever find. What Furtwaengler did, is he actually performed, as he sometimes called it, "between the notes": That the secret of music, is not to perform the score, but to perform the music. And the music lies in the contrapuntal relationship of all the elements, from beginning to end.

Now, a good composer will not compose a piece by part. A good composer will compose the thing as a single idea, which they then evolve, into a completed composition. Going back and forth to correct it, correct it, correct it; trying to give it perfect coherences. So that, in the performance of that music, the first note, as with the "lunge," as with Furtwaengler: The first note must command the audience--must command it. You must transport the audience from the stage they're looking at, from the musicians they're looking at--transport them into the imagination. That's the trick of great artistic performance: Never try to be literal. Never be Romantic. You must reach the cognitive powers of the imagination, because the great music is that, which is heard in the imagination, not heard with the ear. The ear is a way of getting at the mind, not the mind at the ear.

So, his attacks, and his sense of coherence of the development of the contrapuntal development of an idea, from beginning to end, would create the effect of something which tends to be as messy as Tchaikovsky is, and make it a perfectly coherent piece of composition, which grabs you, at the first stroke--and didn't let you go until the last. And it was all, in the end, one idea. One impression. One impact.

So, the great art develops that.

Now, what gives Mahler and many of the Romantics, what they did--this was the Napoleonic influence, and it became very terrible in Vienna. Mahler was a very skilled musician, a very skilled conductor, but he was a very immoral one; and his wife was worse: Mahler. She practiced it, in extenso, hmm? But, these Romantics parodied, for example: Berlioz, Czerny, Liszt, Wagner, they parodied Classical composition. They were producing things like, for example: Clara Schumann would insist, in defending her husband's work, she said, "My husband never wrote passage-work!" The Romantics write passage-work. Liszt is an example: passage- work. Czerny: passage-work. For sensual effects per se.

Example: Laurence Olivier--probably the worst actor of the British stage, of all. Laurence Olivier, was, apart from being an asshole, a very bad actor. But, the Queen knighted him; or be- knighted him, as the case may be. When asked about why does somebody become an actor, Sir Laurence Olivier said, "Look at me." Now, the actor, who wishes to be seen, for himself, and admired as a person on stage, is no actor! The ancient Greek, Classical actors, operated from behind the mask. Two or three speakers, wearing masks, usually from different positions, would perform the entire Classical drama. You couldn't see the actor: He was masked! So, you were forced the see the actor, in the part that he was playing, in the imagination. You're forced to see the relationship among the parts that are being played in the imagination. Therefore, you're acting on the stage of the imagination of the audience. You are establishing a cognitive real relationship with the audience, rather than, "I admire his style!"

And, Sir Laurence Olivier was a bum actor. His Shakespeare was intolerable--disgusting! One worse than the other. Because he was a fraud! It was like a prostitute, trying to be seduced. "Seduce me! Please, seduce me! I'm so beautiful! Please!" He didn't give a damn about the play! He cared about the popularity of Sir Laurence Olivier.

As opposed to other British actors, who are Classical actors- -who are not so good, but at least they were actors. They forced you into the realm of the imagination. For example, as Shakespeare says, in the Chorus, in Henry V, the opening: "Don't see. You won't see any horses on this stage. You won't see any great clash of arms! Great showers of arrows! You won't hear the thunder of hoofs. But, in your imagination, you'll see it all and know it all." Because, essence was to get the idea across, in the drama. Not a sensual effect.

And the same thing is in music. Mahler's problem was--and all these guys would do it! All the Romantics would do it. Let's take, for example, the case of the so-called "Royal Theme": The Royal Theme was codified, in a sense, by Mozart in his first use of Lydian mode, following a problem defined by Haydn. After that point, every leading Classical composer, through Brahms, always used the Lydian mode and its Mozart treatment of Bach's Royal Theme, as a reference point of composition. Most of Beethoven references it, directly or indirectly. The perfect example of that, are things like the Opus 132 String Quartet--perfect example, Lydian mode. Which is no longer a composition in movements--just like the 131; no longer a composition in movements, but it's a drama, a unified drama from beginning to end, in which the parts are played on stage, like parts, like actors: They're all coherent; all to a single effect. When it's done properly, it's beautiful! It's magnificent! It captures you, from the first stroke of the attack.

We had 131 was done for me, for my birthday celebration, in Germany, performed by one of  Norbert Brainin's groups of people and--absolutely magnificent attack. You'll probably hear it, because it's being recorded on CD, at least for me and for others; so you'll hear it. But, the attack: It captures, from the beginning; if you know the composition, it captures you, from the beginning: and doesn't let you go until the end.

So, it's a unity of effect. It's the same kind of unity of effect, which you get in a great Classical Greek sculpture, of motion; a statue, but the statue is a body in motion, even though it seems to be still. Because, to comprehend what this is, you have to see: Just imagine, a frozen moment of motion; a still photograph of somebody in mid-motion, and you get the sense of their being in mid-motion. And you can convey ideas in that. Because the relationship is what's the idea is there.

And, the problem with Mahler, is that Mahler, like many others, would parody things from great composers--even Brahms, which was his so-called "rival" in a sense, in the Vienna environment. So, that's the difference. It's not similarities. I mean, the Art of the Fugue is parodied--many people tried to parody it. But they don't understand it, because they miss the germ-principle, and that's what the fun is. [applause]

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