Question: Okay, Lyn, I was very happy with what you said earlier, starting off on this question of the Pythagorean comma. From the cadre school in Lancaster [Pa.], you said, that's what you've got to know. That was a good start, for me.

My question that that and other things have sparked, in my mind--also Helga addressed this question of Classical art versus Romanticism--I've been studying and thinking about the mind of Bach, and the question of his mind and his compositions, and how we actually create the preconditions for a new school of Classical music--what you've already begun saying on this Florentine bel canto. But I'm also thinking in terms of what Bach did, which--it is singing, as we know--it's what Kepler did. Also this idea that you said before, somewhere in the next 50 years, we need to actually have somebody who is at least on the verge of being able to compose. Hopefully, 50 years. Maybe it might be longer than 50 years. All the debates that I always get into now, everything--I mean, we're talking Iraq--get back to music and culture, and I think others would agree that that's the biggest axiom to smash with people, in terms of their identity.

So, I've been studying the riddles that Bach has in his--with his Royal Theme, and solved a couple of those, and in terms of not looking at the back of the book at the answers, and actually going through the process of solving those, I'm getting a sense of, more than I ever thought, of the brilliance of Bach. Now, the question I have though, is, what is the figured bass? Because this is throughout the Musical Offering, and I know Mozart has written a book on this, and my assumption, in discussions with Fred Haight on music, there must be something, something about this bass voice, has some other element, besides what we think of as the melody and the harmony, from the violin, or the soprano voice, that also adds to a lawful spontaneity. And I'm wondering if this has some addition--I'm thinking from the standpoint of how to compose; how you actually create a way to think about how somebody composes, a Bach, in particular.

LaRouche: Well, I think that figured bass, the way it's sometimes taught, is made into a kind of fetish. To me, I would say, there's something very obvious about it.

The other thing you have to look at, is, you have to look at the mind of Bach. Now Bach was a very religious figure, and you take things like the various stages of composition of updating of the St. John Passion, and the St. Matthew Passion, which are sort of the second-half of his composing career, and look at what is the mission-orientation of Bach, in major compositions, as distinct from those kinds of compositions which are essentially exercises like the Preludes and Fugues, which are very much polished works, very concentrated works, but these do not, in and of themselves, tell you exactly what's going on in himself, to drive him to what he does.

If you look at the St. John Passion, especially the St. Matthew Passion, and you think about what these works are, as typical of Bach. And you see that also in a lot of the Motets, and so forth. But you see what this tells you about Bach, about Bach's mind. Bach is essentially a religious figure. His function is to take a theme, like the subject-matter of the St. Matthew Passion, which is the central theme of all Christianity, and produce in it, a type of work, which you encounter again, in a somewhat higher form, in the late String Quartets of Beethoven, the Opus 31, the Opus 131, 132, in particular, hmm? Or in other works of that period. This is a new form of composition, relative to what the quartet had been up to that point. It's a revolution in music, not entirely coming as a surprise--or the Missa Solemnis also contains the same elements. I have not heard a performance of the Missa Solemnis by any conductor, which satisfies me as being consistent with Beethoven's intent. And the reasons for that difficulty lies essentially in what you see also in the Late Quartets of Beethoven. These are a new type of composition, but they hark back, in many ways, to what you see the the St. Matthew Passion and similar works by Bach.

And so, the general idea, the purpose of music, is never lost, in this sense. What's the purpose?

The question is the question of immortality. In Christianity, the question of immortality centers on the figure of Christ. It centers on the Passion and Crucifixion, essentially--not the Resurrection as much, but the Passion and Crucifixion, because not many people have been resurrected lately. So therefore, this is not a common, sensuous experience. But the Passion and the Crucifixion, themselves, are within the scope of the sensuous capability of the average human being.

Now you have a setting: You have a church; you're coming into the Easter service time; you have a congregation, a singing congregation, in this church. You have a chorus, a voice chorus; you have singers who are part of a choral group, and soloists. You have an orchestra, and you have a congregation. They're all participating in a great artistic work which is being performed for each, in the imagination. It is not heard sound. It is a performance in the imagination. In this performance, what is seen and what is felt, is the process from the Passion through the Crucifixion, and beyond the Crucifixion. The audience relives that experience. That experience, not Biblical text, is the identity of Christianity, in the minds of that audience.

The mission of Bach, is to be able to do that. To take an audience, a congregation, and musicians, and to put them through an experience of reenacting and reliving the experience of the Passion, the betrayal, and the Crucifixion of Christ, as a living event, in the domain of the imagination of an audience, which is participating in the act of the imagination. That is what Bach does. How does Bach integrate the musicians, the congregation, the boys' chorus, the adult chorus, the soloists -- integrate them into one unifying experience, without flaw, so nothing disturbs the effect which is aimed at? The secret of Bach's music, is he does that. And the method of well-tempered counterpoint, which he develops to this end, is precisely that. Bach teaches the organ to sing. Bach teaches the violin to sing, with a human voice, bel canto. He teaches all kinds of ensembles of instruments to sing, in a way which is consistent with the achievements intended by the St. John Passion, and by the St. Matthew Passion, performed in that way. That is what the driver is. It is not trying to find a technique, a musical technique. It is trying to perform a mission and developing the technique which that mission requires.

Like building a bridge: You don't build a bridge to perfect the art of engineering. You develop the art of engineering to be able to build the bridge. And that's what Bach is.

So the ground [figured] bass comes in as a perfectly natural part of this whole process from the history of music, in the terms of the changes which are directed. And you get the inverted pedal-point, which is a nice little experience that Bach uses occasionally, that gets you into understanding what it's all about. So actually, beyond Bach, what was the ground bass, or the figured bass, actually evolves, and takes on new forms in later forms of composition. So it's there, the principle is there, but look at it only as a part of this process of the imagination. And look at it from the standpoint, always of this neighboring key relationship in the process of composition and counterpoint. Bach carries it beyond that--but don't make a fetish of it. It's there, it's a part of the history of the development of the methods of composition and performance of music.

It involves a principle which is never really abandoned in the Classical composition, but it sort of vanishes into a new form, a higher form of evolution, as in, for example, look at this relationship: Take the progress from Bach's work, and Bach's conception, which is never betrayed by any of his followers, of Classical composition; then look at things like the late works of Beethoven, look at the Late Quartets, and look at the Missa Solemnis, and look at these things from that standpoint. Look at Beethoven's earlier Mass, which he writes a letter, and says, "I am Beethoven. I've written this thing. My reason, my motives are my own." Beethoven is a very religious figure; very deep religious believer. The Missa Solemnis expresses that. The Late Quartets express that. And to understand the Late Quartets, it's very easy to understand them, in a sense--in one sense, difficult--but very easy, from another standpoint, as an audience. Think of Bach. Think of Bach's major religious works. Think of the Late Quartets as a new emergence of something from Bach which Beethoven has carried forward and brought forth in a new form. Look at the Missa Solemnis in this context. Look at the failures of conductors and orchestras and choruses to perform the Missa Solemnis. Not because it's so musically challenging--it is--but, because it is theologically challenging. And the theology of the conductor stinks, and that's why he can't do a good job with the music.

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