Answers From LaRouche


Q:
What damage has the division of art
and science done to the Noösphere?

                              
  - from February 1, 2023 National Cadre School

Question All right, well, I've read your essay on believing is not necessarily knowing, and what I think is really interesting is how you look at these two things, as social sciences and physical sciences, and how they're really joined by the same method. Well, I've noticed that in our society, and in schools, in particular, students tend to have this either, I'm a science and math student, or, I'm an art and history student, and, particularly, I always classified myself as like the science, math student, and I see how this has, like, affected me, negatively, and the culture in general, by the fact that people have a lack of appreciation for great art. And because of that, they don't quite understand history, as an unfolding art work. So, I'd like you to comment on the dynamic of that in the Noösphere, and how we can address this with people. Because there's a lot of emotional attachment to, "this is my art work, my music, you can't tell me what's right or wrong." So, I'd like you to address that.

LaRouche: The problem is, is you step on people's toes when you say, "The only art is Classical artistic composition." Now, you take most of this garbage which you see plastered all over the walls in various places, you think: "Who urinated on that wall? That's not art."

"No, that's a work of art. You can't say that about that work of art."

[garbled] smeared it on something else, you know.

Now, the point is, the best example, which I've said before, you probably know it very well, by now. This question of Brunelleschi's Dome. And the principle that you have to recognize is, there's a mystery which many sculptors who call themselves artists, don't know. That's why they make such bad sculpture. They can't do decent sculpture, so they say, "Well, I got this mysterious thing. I'll paste this here. I'm inspired. And you've got to look at this. It's wonderful I'm inspired. My drunken friends are inspired by this, too. What's wrong with you?"

But, the point is, you take the great discovery of Classical Greek sculpture, which was then replicated by Leonard da Vinci, as a matter of principle, in terms of his paintings, and drawings. The principle... the difference was this. Instead of doing tombstone figures, dead people standing -- it's like a tripod method of standing. Like the Archaic Egyptian, or the Archaic Greek. What was the difference? Between Classical sculpture and this Archaic form.

It's that you had a certain off-balance characteristic of the Classical sculpture. Off-balance. You couldn't fit a Euclidean or Cartesian universe -- it's non-Euclidean, anti-Euclidean. Anti-Cartesian. And you had a sense that the sculpture, as you said with these [ ] for example, and so forth, the sculpture was an instantaneous cross-section of something in motion. Frozen motion. An instant of motion. Eternity in an instant. Like Keats' poem, On a Grecian Urn, huh? "Truth is beauty, and beauty is truth." Instantaneous. Frozen in time.

Now, what's the principle?

Then you look at Brunelleschi, and the dome. There's the principle. I recognized this. After this torment of a few months I went through, on trying to figure how does it work? Remember. This was impossible to construct this cupola. The wood didn't exist to build it by the conventional Roman method. It was a cupola twice the size, essentially, of the Pantheon, in terms of structure. You couldn't build it.

How did he build it? He took a contract, and said he'd build it. How did he know he was going to build it? What everybody thought was impossible. He used a principle, the principle was the catenary. What's the catenary? The catenary is now known as the principle  of universal least action. Leibniz's principle. What does the catenary represent? It's a physical curve. It's not a static curve, it's not a Cartesian curve. It's a physical curve, physical action. Just take a hanging chain. Test it, with this principle.

That's the principle of Classical culture!

Now, what Leonardo did, later on the thing, same thing. He developed a new conception of perspective, which is based on the same principle. Leonardo demonstrated how to put the principle of Classical Greek sculpture in the form of painting. And you go into the thing like the Last Supper, in Milan, which I saw on one occasion, directly. I was very provoked by it. This has characteristics. This Last Supper, is actually a Classical sculpture. It's a painting, but it's a Classical sculpture. The eye of Christ follows you, whereever you go inside this Basilica.

You look at the thing... it changes. You stand there, it moves with you. You move, it moves, in your mind. It communicates to the mind of an action.

Well, what is this? What is this principle of art, which does this? The principle of the mind. What's the principle of the mind? Well, what's the connection to the cupola? It's Leibniz's principle of universal least action.

Therefore, Classical... the same thing is true in music. Where [ ] they have a great problem with the ‘comma' of Pythagoras. We don't have Pythagoras', we only have the report of what he discovered. Well, what he describes, if you replicate what he describes, what is described, what does he do?

He takes a monochord, like a single string on a musical instrument. Now you get a singer to sing up and down various scales, in various modes. And they were using modes. The singer is singing up, and down, in various modes. Now, if you try to put this on a scale, as a scale, and say, "What is the frequency of these tones, of these keys, individual keys, up and down?", there's a difference. In the bel canto approach, or anything approximately bel canto. Natural [  ], they're different.

In a violin playing, you get the same thing, right? Your fingering is slightly different. How's it work? The performer does not actually think of frequencies. The performer thinks of music, in the mind. Like a singer. And they will just do it that way. We demonstrated this with Norbert Brainin, for example, at his performing. It's in the mind!

And what Pythagoras actually demonstrated is, by a physical experiment, of a monochord, and having the singer sing against the monochord, and noting what the positions were on the monochord, which fit this frequency, vibrating frequency, obviously, he came up and said, "there's a gap." There's always gap, up and down, there are gaps. This interval of gap is a ‘comma.' This is not a mathematically derived function, which some idiot tries to get. This is a physical phenomenon, which is the essence of counterpoint. The essence of counterpoint is essentially that.

So, you find in all through art, in painting, or literature, the principle of art is, in literary composition, as in poetry, is a combination of musicality, and irony. Including metaphor. And the way people use commas, if you follow the New York Times style book, you cannot communicate ideas. You don't put enough commas in.

What does the comma mean? A comma means, when written, it means there's a voice change, of some kind. Now, any qualified singer, bel canto-trained, would recognize what that means. And you want to see that demonstrated, take the great Classical Lied, German Lied, Classical lied, or Verdi. Take it. Take these parts, what happened? It's a break, a shift, a shift. Like, I've often cited the last of Vier Ernste Gesaenge, the last one, in the close. "Aber die Liebe," huh? And there's a change. There's a key change. Everything is changed. And it's a slight break, it's also a continuation of the line, with a break in it. And you're in a completely new dimension, with the "Aber die Liebe."

So, these ironies, which you use commas and other marks of punctuation, and so forth, to get across in written form, if you think about how you should speak, what is written, in poetry, you don't recite words. You must present ideas. And the way you do it, is by always using these musical qualities of vocal shift. You have register shifts available to you; you have voice coloration shifts available to you. You have the elements of surprise.

For example, Furtwaengler. Furtwaengler's technique. Furtwaengler demonstrates that the composition does not start with the first note. Never. Some of the greater performers recognize the problem: that they can start with the first note, but it doesn't work. What Furtwaengler would do, he'd rehearse people. Great artists always do this. Rehearse people. The audience is waiting. The orchestra is waiting. They know he's going to give the stroke. They don't know when. [unclear -- Element of surprise]

And he plants the idea beforehand in the rehearsal. So, the element of surprise. So the composition starts before the first note, and ends after the last note. There's that space between -- you change space, so to speak -- before the first note, you have a pause, and you're controlling the pause. Goes up, control the pause. You end it. You control the end. And this frames the whole composition, so it's a unit idea. You catch the performance by surprise. Not fully by surprise, you catch them by surprise, to make sure that the counterposition, the counterpoint, the real counterpoint -- I mean, the counterpoint, the formal counterpoint, is significant, but you've to think about the counterpoint, as a general principle, not just a principle of how you compose a bunch of notes, in various parts.

So, therefore, you look at it, and you say, "What's the difference between science and art?" It's the same. The problem is, that on the one hand, science is not science, when you try to derive it from the formal set of definitions, axioms, and postulates. And art is not art, when it's splashed on the wall. There's a scientific principle. The difference is: in art, the subject is the relationship of man to man, or man mastering the universe. In science, the subject is the individual understanding man's relationship to the physical universe. But it's the same thing. It's connected by the fact that art is a way to communicate physical science. [applause]

-30-

Paid for by LaRouche in 2004

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